Houses and Hostels and Shacks (oh my)

It has been a very tough week, weather-wise. A cold front moved in on Sunday night, and you'd have thought we were having a hurricane on Monday. The wind was stronger than I've ever felt and the rain was coming in sideways for most of the day. News reports are saying that over 500 people in Guguletu lost their homes from flooding and wind damage. I don't know where they go, since there really aren't shelters for situations like this. People are most likely living with family and friends until they can rebuild.

It's not surprising that this happens given the state of the buildings here. I'm going to post some pictures to give you a feel for the different types of homes in the townships. Because I can only add 5 pictures per posting it will take 2 or 3 to show them all.

Shacks are entry-level housing. Most people who arrive in Guguletu or any of the surrounding areas either buy an existing shack or scrounge materials to make their own. The difficulty is finding a place to put it - you'll find shacks just about everywhere, from edges of swamps to sidewalks along the main roads. People who own houses have them in their front and back yards. You'll even find them under bridges and along railroad tracks. As I've described before, most are made from discarded (or "borrowed") wood or zinc panels. They come in all shapes and sizes but most are 10 to 12 feet wide and 8 to 10 feet deep.

The insides are a catch-as-catch-can affair. You'll see just about everything in them, from almost nothing to very well-designed living areas. The picture below is typical, though. This man's shack is a little larger than normal, big enough to have two "rooms" separated by a curtain. You can see his bed to the right and his TV on the left. Behind me is their kitchen and eating area, which are about the same size as the bed area. Everything in this shack was probably pulled from a trash bin, including the track lighting over his head. It's a bit ironic that most of the shacks use fluorescent bulbs like the one on the left side of the picture, as these are 10 times the cost of incandescents. But, they also save on electricity costs. You can see that the walls are bare, which is typical. He had one window in his shack, and one door. Doors are scrounged separately from the walls, so they never quite fit and never close right. They do have locks, though, or at least some way to secure the building when people are gone or sleeping.

Hostels are the next big housing option. They're better than shacks in that they're solid, made of brick or blocks. However, most people in hostels have smaller living spaces than shack dwellers. They usually have a single room, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet, and these may be shared by as many as 6-8 people. I was at one hostel where 9 people were crammed into a 10x10 room. They had a small chest freezer in that room, and every night they would move it into the hallway so people could sleep on the floor. Then, in the morning, they'd move it back again for safekeeping.

Besides their rooms, people in hostels share a common area, maybe 20 feet by 12 feet. The rooms are down short hallways off the common area, one hallway to the left and one to the right. The common area is supposed to be a kitchen and dining area. But, for reasons of security everyone keeps their food and cooking equipment in their rooms, so the common areas are just used as places to sit and play cards or talk. The layout is common space in the middle

There are three kinds of hostels in the townships. The first are the oldest, built by the apartheid government to house men who worked for the municipalities, mines, or other large institutions. The idea was that men would live here 11 months a year, going back to their homelands only over Christmas and New Year's holidays. Women and families were never supposed to live in these hostels. Well, after a number of years the women did come to the hostels and they became incredibly overcrowded. It was not unusual to have 3 or 4 families living in one room. Not 3 or 4 people, but 3 or 4 families, each with 3-4 people (two adults and two kids, for example). I'm amazed anyone had kids with that arrangement. Everything happened in the rooms, including bathing in some cases (using a plastic washtub), cooking, clothes washing, etc. I'm learning that privacy is not assumed here, that exposing yourself is part of life. This is not to say people aren't modest, because they are, but when you have to get dressed you just get it done.

The second style of hostel is slightly improved from the first. Several years ago the government tried to make improvements on the basic hostel by creating more of an apartment feel. A single family will now have their own space with a bathroom. The government also built a second story on the buildings so that more people can be accommodated. Of course, this led to problems because the construction wasn't the best. Roofs leak and plumbing backs up, meaning that many people have constant water and sewage problems. Walls are cracking from settling and some people are scared that the building is going to fall in on them someday.

The third type of hostel is company-owned. Firms like Coca-Cola, Bokomo (the big cereal maker here), and Bonita (dairy products) built hostels for their workers. These buildings are really nice compared to the others. They're painted inside, have decent stainless steel counters in the common areas, and have larger rooms than the government hostels. Many have hot water (assuming the heaters work). The companies who owned these regularly came to inspect them and make improvements as needed. Most companies no longer maintain their buildings, but the residents are good about keeping them up.

The ideal is to have a proper house. These are generally cinder block homes, with 3 or 4 rooms. They have bathrooms and showers, hot water, and appliances. Most houses have several people living in them, but there is much more space for people to spread out. Some house owners will also build shacks for their older children to stay in, which gives them some privacy and the parents more space to live in. Shacks may be rented out for R150 or R200 a month, which brings in needed money for the homeowner.

All of these housing options co-exist in the townships. You'll see houses on one side of a street and hostels on the other, with shacks all around.

I always wonder what people would do if a developer came in and build high-rise apartments in Guguletu, like those in the Bronx or Chicago. Inside one square block of apartments you could house all of the people now living in shacks or hostels covering 8 or 10 square blocks. I'll have to ask why no one's done that yet. Then again, you don't see high-rise apartments anywhere in Cape Town, save three buildings on the edge of the city center.

More to come.