Abstract:

The study of poverty has remained in the forefront of both development practitioners and researchers alike; however, the number of poor people remains high throughout the world. Housing security, food security and water security can be seen as central to urban poverty alleviation, and form part of a declaration of the Habitat Conference in Vancouver Canada, in 1976. Housing insecurity is consequently one of the so many faces of poverty. This paper analyses the socio-economic antecedents associated with housing insecurity and homelessness. There are a number of definitions of housing insecurity, of which homelessness is the extreme. The impact of housing insecurity is even severe among children and becomes perpetual due to the consequences of homelessness, which include no schooling, poor health and exposure to crime. This paper presents the conceptualisation of housing insecurity and a review of the socioeconomic antecedents of housing insecurity and its extreme state of hopelessness. The paper uses the general household survey data collected by STATSSA with a sample of 21 601 households. A regression model is employed in determining the household’s characteristics that are associated with housing insecurity. Income food security status and material of the structure were some of the factors that significantly predicted household housing insecurity. The paper also proposes a framework to develop a succinct measure of housing insecurity as a second step in the series of developing the literature on housing insecurity in South Africa.

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