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The housing careers of black middle-class residents in a South African metropolitan area
- Source :
- Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 33
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Under apartheid, black African households could not own land or homes in most major urban centres in South Africa. This limited residential mobility and locked many households into state rental accommodation in townships. Homeownership for all South Africans was restored in the mid-1980 s and the Group Areas Act was repealed in 1991.Democracy opened up economic opportunities previously unavailable to black people. This paper investigates the effect on black middle-class South African households’ residential mobility and housing careers. A retrospective cross-sectional survey of 244 such homeowners in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality determined their last five housing states. Changes in housing state indicated a steady improvement in housing quality, but tenure changes were not necessarily unidirectional—some had reverted to rental. More than 85% of the study participants had used mortgages to finance their housing career. Very few had financed their housing using own savings, an inheritance, or sale of a previous house, and not many had used the government subsidy. We found that housing careers are bridging the historical spatial racial divide in this municipality.
- Subjects :
- media_common.quotation_subject
Geography, Planning and Development
0211 other engineering and technologies
0507 social and economic geography
02 engineering and technology
Renting
South Africa
State (polity)
Group Areas Act
Human geography
Socioeconomics
media_common
Middle class
business.industry
05 social sciences
Housing careers
021107 urban & regional planning
Subsidy
Housing quality
Housing states
Metropolitan area
Democracy
Urban Studies
Geography
Black middle class
business
050703 geography
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15664910
- Volume :
- 33
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Housing and the Built Environment
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0157f2908a5d9ae94108e3a009745d63