In South Africa where housing shortage is a massive problem, it is amazing that there are so many rules and regulations.

Even if a poor family manage to get the funds together to buy a portion of land the cost involved just to get to the building stage is terrible.

The ultimate authority deciding if a building is approved is the town planner. There is nowhere to appeal to if your building plan is not approved.

Traditional building methods used by people in Africa will never be approved even though it was used for 1000 years . So people end up in shanty towns.

Then you get to farms. Many farmers want to retain their loyal workers that has been on the farm for generations. However they run into more regulations. They may not build dwellings larger than 120m2 for a worker, even if there is 10 people in the family. Then if a worker salary exceeds a certain level, that worker may no longer be accommodated on the farm. Then the town planner of the municipality places a limit on the number of workers a farm may house on the farm. If a farmer does rebel and go against the town planner he gets served with a demolition order from the local court. So now the farm workers end up on the decades long housing waiting list that tax payers fund.

We all support deregulation to make it easier for companies to create job opportunities.

Why is there no push to deregulate housing regulations to relieve the backlog.

Why not let the people form housing co ops, buy land and form communities like those you see in the far rural areas?

The National Building regulations was not designed because traditional housing was substandard, it was put into place to serve the banks who wanted standard housing to use as security for loans.