https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2317-4578
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ABSTRACT
The urgency of providing affordable student housing influenced government and higher education institutions to consider urban renewal as a possible avenue to alleviate this demand, with the result that private–public partnerships were promoted to address this. Issues discussed in this article are drawn from qualitative interviews with University of Pretoria’s Student Representative Council (2018–2019), a university official and a Pastor as well as an administrator from churches based in Hatfield and Arcadia, Pretoria. This article looks at urban renewal processes in Hatfield (Old East of Pretoria), which is home to the University of Pretoria and argues that the unintended consequences of revanchist gentrification has not sufficiently addressed issues of affordable student housing. Rather, there is evidence of student homelessness.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments and support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This article was prepared as an outcome of a collaborative research project, titled “Pathways out of homelessness: Going deeper”, a trans-disciplinary research project on street homelessness in the City of Tshwane, co-led by Professors Stephan de Beer and Rehana Vally.
4 We are aware that students from partially funded government and private schools also enroll at institutions with lower APS requirements. Among them would be students who do not comply with the APS requirements of the institutions of their choice.
5 City Improvement District refers to a geographic area in which property owners and/or tenants agree to pay for certain services in addition to those offered by a local municipality to improve the physical and social appearance of the concerned area (Central Johannesburg Partnership 2001: 4).
6 Exit strategies are about getting out of homelessness. Thus, as the Pathways out of Homelessness project that brings together UP, the Tshwane Homelessness Forum, the University of South Africa and the City of Tshwane emphasizes that, strategies to help homeless persons integrate into society need policy support, reinsertion activities and, importantly, awareness of homeless people.
7 Revanchism, from revanche in French meaning revenge, is generally accepted as returning to a previous order. In nineteenth-century France this was about reinstating the bourgeois order in Paris, for example. Similarly, in Hatfield, where gentrification meant pushing out the poor and making it more bourgeois.
8 Student entertainment is lucrative, and the area known as The Strip on Lynnwood Road which is close to Hatfield and across the university residences is an example of profitable student entertainment. Developers in Hatfield chose residence and housing as their preferred investment.
9 Technically, the NSFAS bursary covers tuition and university residence. Where an NSFAS bursar rents private accommodation, the bursary contribution is the equivalent of the university residence cost. In addition to this, the bursar also receives an annual allowance of R15,000 for living expenses, R7500 for transport, R2500 for books allowance and R2900 for Personal Care allowance. www.nsfas.org.za. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
10 Moreover, from evidence collected, we understood that students that missed the deadlines or whose applications were not compliant had to wait a year to reapply.
11 They are part of the students now known as the missing middle: students who are unable to qualify for government funding (because their supporting houselholds have incomes above the threshold for NSFAS eligibility) and yet are not in a financial position to pay for their own fees.
12 Haroon Bhorat, Mumbi Kimani and Neryvia Pillay in their 2018 policy brief titled, The Evolution of National Student Financial Aid Scheme report that the number of students funded by NSFAS increased from about 70,000 students in 2000 to 191,000 in 2012 at an aggregate level while in 2020/2021 it currently stands at just below a million.
13 Ideally, the NSFAS funding process is supposed to be a seamless operation between them, the student and the institution. Institutions allow recipients of NSFAS to register and would lift the payment outstanding once it received the funds from NSFAS. However, as newspaper reports and concerns from students have shown, glitches in the system affect NSFAS students adversely. In November 2020, News24 carried the headlines: Solidarity writes to NSFAS after scheme fails to pay students’ study fees. www.news24.com Retrieved 11 March 2021.
14 According to NSFAS, a bursar needs to pass at least 50 per cent of modules registered to ensure continuation of NSFAS support. In this way, NSFAS acknowledges the learning disadvantages that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have experienced.
15 The areas mentioned by the church administrator used to be part of middle-class areas that experienced urban decay, probably because of insufficient infrastructural support and maintenance, but are now gentrifying.
16 Part of the demands of UP student protests always include the issues of safety and a demand that the university consider rescheduling tests and exams to permit students to catch the last transport home.