Social Rental Housing and Empowerment: Voices of Beneficiaries from Gauteng, South Africa

Adequate housing undergirds all social and economic relations, connecting communities with other related services that are key for people’s optimum development. It is a key social welfare service and a basic human need whose empowerment function resonates with the social work agenda of enabling smooth functioning of the society and creating socially and economically viable communities. In this article, I report on the housing experiences of social housing beneficiaries in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Using an empowerment lens, I contend that housing has the potential to give people more control and self-determination over their lives by linking them to the economy. I employed purposive sampling in this qualitative study and selected three social housing institutions: two in Johannesburg and one in Pretoria. In each of these institutions a focus group discussion was conducted with the beneficiaries. The research findings indicate that adequate housing delivery bears numerous empowerment dividends, directly helping poor people to break from a cycle of poverty. Consonant with its mandate of empowering communities, social work needs to be more proactive in housing advocacy on behalf of poor people and marginalised individuals and groups.