Evaluation of social housing cooperatives and instalment sale projects

The evaluation of social housing cooperatives and instalment sales projects was commissioned by the Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA). Co-operative housing and instalment sale (rent to buy) schemes have been developed in South Africa by housing institutions and co-operatives after the Institutional Housing Subsidy Programme (IHSP) was
introduced in 1996. The IHSP was targeted at housing institutions to provide alternative tenure arrangements to immediate ownership. Such arrangements included rental, instalment sale, shareblock or cooperative tenure, to qualifying beneficiaries on condition that beneficiaries would not take transfer of the property for at least four years after the date of occupation. Co-operative housing was one of the key interventions initiated by the South African Government to assist in the delivery of housing to the low-to moderate income communities through alternative tenure basis, as a response to the social housing need. The aim of this report is to identify all the housing co-operative and instalment sale schemes nationally & to give the status quo of each project along with “lessons learnt” from SHRA interventions; to document the successes and challenges of (social) housing delivery and management through housing co-operative and instalment sale projects, including case studies; and to assess the costs and implications on the state and citizens from implementing these models.