Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg
Housing
Backyard Micro-Flats Aim to Ease South Africa’s Housing Crisis
A startup is fronting the costs for homeowners to become landlords as part of a broader effort to expand affordable housing in poor townships.
Though once reliant on a modest state pension, 70-year-old Nonkosi Klaas now earns more than South Africa’s national median income by leasing six backyard apartments on her property.
Two years ago, she partnered with a housing startup called Bitprop, which builds and manages micro-apartments at no upfront cost to landowners in South African townships — areas where apartheid-era governments forcibly relocated people of color, and which remain among the country’s poorest and most violent.