Paper short abstract:

The Housing Programme has resettled many residents, and their approval depends on multiple factors. The case, Hammonds Farm, reveals contradictory outcomes: economic displacement alongside gratitude. Given these mixed outcomes, re-conceptualisation of ‘displacement’ and ‘resettlement’ are explored.

Paper long abstract:

The national South African Housing Programme has succeeded in providing around 4 million housing 'opportunities' for poor residents many of whom have experienced resettlement as a direct result of programme implementation. Advanced under positive policy rhetoric, such resettlement has proved popular with residents in some respects, with significant variations occurring across the country depending on multiple factors (location, amenities, cost, access to employment, build quality, extent of participation etc). This paper draws on a case from the city of Durban which explores these contradictory and oftentimes poisonous outcomes for residents and points to the challenges of urban change alongside citizenship gains in contexts of high unemployment, poverty and inequality. The case is Hammonds Farm, where many residents have been moved from Ocean Drive-In, a former squatter settlement some 17 km further out on the city's periphery. Resettled residents combine gratitude for shelter, privacy and security alongside intense anxiety over direct impacts on livelihoods opportunities. Resettlement has made them poorer. The one-off nature of the housing subsidy makes this reality more fraught, in that securing better-located formal housing is unfeasible, and the financial pressures on residents results in new tensions and violence, previously less common. The paper questions how we conceptualise 'displacement' and 'resettlement' when outcomes are so mixed.