Fifteen thousand hard-up families, who owe the Durban unicity council millions of rands, will have some of their rental arrears wiped out and they will be moved from their current low-income council-owned homes to cheaper houses.
Council members on Thursday announced that an estimated R18-million in outstanding rental arrears for council-owned houses.
The arrears total about R30-million unicity-wide. The city says its plan to relocate thousands of indigent tenants who have defaulted is an alternative to evicting tenants who are trapped in a cycle of poverty.
In terms of the new plan, those residents who cannot afford to pay rent and service charges will be moved from their current residences and transferred to government-subsidised houses where they will not have to pay rates or rent.
The properties they will be moved to are valued at less than R30 000. The council does not charge rates or rent for such properties. The lifeline announced by the council will apply to tenants whose income does not exceed R1 500 a month.
They will be eligible for a free supply of six kilolitres of water and, in the long run, will not be expected to pay for up to 50 kilowatts of electricity consumption.
Rental arrears accumulated in their accounts until June 30, 1999, will be fully written off, and the tenants given the opportunity to settle any further amount owed after this date over a 36-month period, the council announced. Interest will be written off in full.
By scrapping the bigger chunk of the bill and allowing debtors to repay the outstanding balance, the city hopes to encourage a culture of payment around the unicity region, said unicity manager Michael Sutcliffe and councillor Sbu Gumede from the city housing committee.
The city's social workers will soon start visiting people in their homes to explain the implications of the rehousing programme, they said.
The move has been slammed by the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF) which has over the years been vehemently opposed to the council's hardline stance taken on arrears rentals.
The CCF has been at the forefront of tenant protests and challenges on high rents, water cut-offs and electricity disconnections. The forum said the council's new plan had to be rejected and warned of great resistance from the targeted communities.
The CCF's Dr Ashwin Desai said the proposed relocation was "insensitive and hideous" because it would remove people from communities in which they have lived for years.
Desai criticised both the idea of allowing people to pay arrears over an extended period as well as the relocation of people to new areas.
"To say they are writing off the arrears is cynical because rent was not supposed to have been paid in the first place as these tenants have been forced to live under inhumane conditions by the apartheid government.
"To say they won't have to pay is a lie because they will still be subjected to some form of payment after the first free 6 kilolitres of water and the minimum electricity consumption has expired," said Desai.