Adjudicating disputes
Where there is a dispute as to who owns the property, this dispute needs to be adjudicated by the housing authority.
Step 1: Invite parties to a conciliation meeting
The authority should notify participants of the conciliation meeting in writing and needs to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the parties receive the invitation to the meeting. Standard notification processes in law require sending notifications by registered mail but this is unlikely to be sufficient, as the parties are unlikely to collect registered mail and the postal system is inefficient.
Housing authorities should therefore consider delivering the invitation to participants by hand or via local ward councillors or community leaders, or via social media, depending on the characteristics of the neighbourhood and beneficiaries.
Housing authorities must maintain evidence of delivery of the invitation so that they can demonstrate that reasonable attempts were made to ensure participants are given a chance to attend the conciliation meeting.
The invitation should ask a prospective participant to prepare his / her case to present at the conciliation meeting and to bring all relevant documentation or evidence. In addition, each participant should be invited to bring a witness with them to the meeting for the purposes of proof that the meeting was held and how it was adjudicated, but the witness will not be allowed to present evidence at the meeting. The invitation should also note that if invited parties do not attend or request a change in the date / time of the meeting, the housing authority can transfer the property in line with available evidence presented at the meeting in the absence of that party.
An example of an invitation can be found under the Additional Resources tab.
Step 2 : Conciliation meeting
The housing authority convenes the conciliation meeting on the date set out in the invitation. The meeting is presided over by a duly authorised panel comprised of officials from the housing authority and in some cases the provincial human settlements departments, depending on the level of accreditation in place.
Before the meeting commences, the housing authority should get all participants to sign an attendance register confirming their participation in the meeting. An example of an attendance register can be found under the Additional Resources tab.
Each participant present his / her case along with relevant documentation or evidence.
Evidence might include:
An informal sales agreement or affidavit signed by the buyer and seller
Proof of payment of the purchase price of a property
A will or document attesting to an ownership claim
Affidavits provided by neighbours
Letters from a street committee
During the meeting, the authority should clearly explain that the purpose of the meeting is to gather information. The housing authority should outline the powers of the housing authority in the property transfer process and explain the requirements for transfer, notably that the housing authority must be satisfied that ownership is uncontested before transferring the property to any party.
In some cases, the disputing parties may reach agreement during this engagement. In this case, the housing authority should document the agreement and ask participants to sign the document, which should confirm that the property will be transferred in accordance with the document signed. The parties should be given a copy of the document at the meeting.
An example of the document recording agreement reached at a conciliation meeting can be found under the Additional Resources tab.
Where no agreement is reached between participants during the conciliation meeting, the panel will determine who the property should be transferred to and should document the decision in writing. The parties should be given a copy of the document at the meeting.
An example of the document determining the outcome of the conciliation meeting can be found under the Additional Resources tab.
Parties to the dispute have the right to appeal the outcome of the adjudication process, through an appeals panel to be established by the housing authority.
Step 3: Transfer in line with determination
Once the conciliation meeting has produced an outcome:
and the adjudicated owner shows a perfect match with beneficiaries as per HSS data, beneficiaries can sign sale agreements as part of the core registration process. see Core Registration Process
and the adjudicated owner does not show a perfect match with beneficiaries as per HSS data, there are three possible options:
The adjudicated owner qualifies for a subsidy but has never applied for a subsidy and an application needs to be submitted. Next step: submit a subsidy application
The adjudicated owner has applied for a subsidy in the past but was declined: In this case, the housing authority must extract and review the subsidy application from the HSS to assess reasons the application was declined. Where these reasons are based on circumstances that might have changed, the housing authority should ask the adjudicated owner to resubmit an application for a subsidy
The adjudicated owner does not qualify for a subsidy. See Regularising non-beneficiaries
Where the adjudicated owner is not the occupant, it is not the housing authority's responsibility to evict the occupant. The registered property owner can approach the courts to enforce his or her rights once the property has been transferred.
Example templates
All the example templates referenced are available under the 'ADDITIONAL RESOURCES' section, Dispute Resolution tab. A direct link is given below:
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