{"id":166023,"date":"2020-09-17T00:30:34","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T22:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders\/"},"modified":"2020-09-17T00:30:34","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T22:30:34","slug":"little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders\/","title":{"rendered":"Little hope for Knysna\u2019s 9,000 backyarders"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/backyardknysna-siphokazimnyobe-2020-0915img_20200910_115943.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"4105618879\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Juanne Kleinbooi\u2019s backyard shack is at the bottom of a hill. Photo: Siphokazi Mnyobe<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9,000 people in Knysna are living in backyards.<\/li>\n<li>The shacks at the bottom of the hill flood with water when it rains.<\/li>\n<li>Only 668 backyarders are on the housing waiting list.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>The future is bleak for the 9,000 backyarders spread across Knysna, fewer than 70<span><span><span><span><span><span>0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>of whom are on the waiting list for housing.<\/p>\n<p>A backyarder is someone who rents a shack or low-cost dwelling (like a caravan) in the yard of another person\u2019s house.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty-six-year-old Juanne Kleinbooi has spent most of her life as a backyarder. She lives in Hornlee West in a two-roomed shack with her husband and three children. Kleinbooi works two days a week at a garage and her husband does occasional work. Like many backyard dwellings in Knysna, the Kleinbooi shack is at the bottom of a hill, where rain water accumulates. The water comes in under the door and the roof leaks. The kitchen is in a tiny room like a corridor, with a two-plate electric stove. Beyond the kitchen is a toilet. The family shares an electric box with neighbours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor dwellers at the bottom, living in a mud bowl like pigs is normal,\u201d says Kleinbooi. \u201cThere is no space in my shack for chairs. We eat sitting on beds and my children do not have a room to study. I grew up as a backyard dweller and now I am raising my children as one. I feel like this is a generational curse,\u201d said Kleinbooi.<\/p>\n<p>According to Knysna municipality communications officer Nwabisa Pondoyi, there are 9,000 backyarders in the town, of whom 668 are on the waiting list for houses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have lost all hope of getting a house,\u201d said 62-year-old year old Clara Thysee who has been a backyard dweller since she moved to her mother\u2019s yard in 1975 with her three children. She lives in an old caravan without a toilet or running water. She cooks on a paraffin stove and uses the toilet in the main house.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Elrick Van Aswegen told GroundUp a project was under way in Hornlee and 33 houses would be set aside for backyarders. He said backyarders should communicate with their ward councillors about housing possibilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Juanne Kleinbooi\u2019s backyard shack is at the bottom of a hill. Photo: Siphokazi Mnyobe 9,000 people in Knysna are living in backyards. The shacks at the bottom of the hill flood with water when it rains. Only 668 backyarders are on the housing waiting list. The future is bleak for the 9,000 backyarders spread across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-166023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/little-hope-for-knysnas-9000-backyarders.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}