Case Study 5 | The PPC Home Owners Support Programme
When PPC Cement—one of South Africa’s largest cement manufacturers—decided to establish an employee’s housing programme, it was confronted with a range of challenges specific to the South African context. High employee indebtedness and lack of financial literacy required PPC to adjust its programme, including offering additional services providing for the development of individual housing plans for each employee. The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa commissioned a case study of this housing programme to contribute to the growing track record of novel solutions and initiatives, pioneered by policy makers, financiers, developers and households themselves that suggest that there are new opportunities for making the housing finance sector work for the poor in Africa. The experience of PPC shows that an organisation can play an integral role in assisting its employees, particularly those with lower incomes, to access affordable and adequate housing by tailoring employee housing programmes to the plights particular to its employees. We hope that this case study, and the other case studies in the series, contribute to the development of imaginative solutions by housing finance practitioners across the continent, assisting them in adapting initiatives to manage the vast array of challenges they face daily.
This case study was prepared with the support of the National Housing Finance Corporation