Social Housing and Upward Mobility in South Africa: an Assessment of Household Outcomes

Social housing offers a way of promoting upward mobility and urban integration by improving people's access to economic and social opportunities. These are prominent goals of South Africa's social housing programme. In practice, household advancement tends to be taken for granted rather than deliberately pursued or monitored. We review survey data for 1632 households across ten social housing projects and find modest evidence of social mobility and racial integration. One reason for this is that other considerations have taken precedence during implementation. We conclude by identifying various ways of reaffirming the transformative goals of social housing.