MLS In Pictures

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MLS Comic Strip

MLS story in comic. — View Gallery

Incremental Settlement

Incremental settlement is the process by which legally recognised settlements are created over time in an incremental manner through the involvement and actions of a range of role-players including government, communities and the private sector. It includes the development of such settlements from an in-situ context as well as a greenfield context. — View Gallery

Bulk Preparation Phase

This is the story of how Pam and her family and friends were involved in building a neighbourhood for themselves. It starts with Pam and some of her friends starting to save for their future housing needs, and then through the contacts they made finding land that a church was willing to donate to them. It also identifies all the processes that they needed to follow to get this land ready for development, including getting planning and environmental approvals. — View Gallery

Basic Development Phase

Pam and her friends from the savings schemes now have approval to undertake a Managed Land settlement pilot project on the church land. Attention now shifts to planning what the blocks will look like, how tenure security will be ensured and how to get some basic level of revives onto the land. — View Gallery

Aided Self Development Phase

Finally Pam, her family and other savings scheme members are now on the land, in blocks, with basic services and tenure, and with access to opportunities beyond the neighbourhood. There challenge now is to create a nice home and neighbourhood for themselves. — View Gallery

Upgrading Phase

Pam and her neighbours achieved a lot in the 7 or 8 years they were on the land without much further government support. They used what money and resources they could get to build themselves some very nice homes, even if these houses where not always of the type normally associated with low income housing. The housing process has been turned upside down from one where people used to wait for government subsidies to come first and then use their own money to add to what government provided; to one where they first used their own resources (with a little support where possible) to build and create houses and neighbourhoods they could afford and used government money to add to what they had already started. We now turn our attention to look at how government money and resources can be used to add to what people have started themselves. — View Gallery

On-going Phase

Pam and her friends have now finally received government housing subsidies, which were used to add to what they had already started. This is not the end of the process as incremental settlement never ends. People are always maintaining, modifying and improving their homes to suite their changing circumstances. All of the aided support interventions started in the aided self development phase now continues into the future. Lessons continue to be learnt and applied in future phases and projects. The incremental settlement approach is replicated and expanded. Pam's experience is shared with others in the town, province, country and world. — View Gallery

Upgrading from Shacks

Managed Land Settlement is an approach that is between these two extremes. Land is made available in an organised and managed manner on which people can start to build their own houses, with government coming in latter to assist in upgrading these areas step by step. — View Gallery