More money, more of the same?

Reuters makes much of a new South African strategy to fight the growth of squatter communities. I’m all for pumping federal money into homebuilding and creating quality domiciles. But adding 200 million rand to a 7 billion housing budget amounts to a mere 2.8 percent increase. And the article fails to note whether the new homes will be affordable to squatters even with the increase in housing subsidies. Again the question is: can government harness the work poor people have already done in creating their communities.