Dream Kaya (Home)
My first piece of serious writing was about my dream home (iKaya Lam). I tried to describe its interior and exterior in such a way that the reader (my teacher) could visualise it. When I wrote my dream home essay at school I was inspired by the sorry state of housing in my community at the time. Most homes were built with zinc and wood. Very few houses were built with bricks. Currently, wooden houses are considered modern and environmentally friendly. In my community, wooden structures remind people of poverty.
Working from home has got me thinking about that dream home again. I have recently moved back closer to where I grew up, Stellenbosch, and I sometimes drive through the streets of Kayamandi my hometown and note with great concern that little has changed, things have become worse. There’s now more zinc and wooden structures that are built poorly and close to each other. This situation has inspired me to build that dream home which I described in my first piece of writing.
The shelter is one of the key needs described in Maslow's Hierarchy of needs yet it is one thing that has not been solved.
As a technologist, I’ve been exposed to many solutions to some of the toughest challenges in society. I sometimes wonder why is it that we have not yet solved and delivered one of the basic needs of humanity. The more I thought about the housing challenge the more I realised that it’s not just a challenge for my community in Kayamandi. Housing is a global challenge that affects many today.
Providing decent housing for citizens is a perennial challenge for nations around the world. From slum residents in the developing world to middle-income households in expensive global capitals, hundreds of millions of people struggle to find decent housing that they can afford without severe financial stress. The economic and human toll of the housing affordability gap is enormous. It is estimated that 330 million households are affected around the world and, under current trends, by 2025 the number of households that occupy unsafe and inadequate housing or are financially stretched by housing costs could reach 440 million—or 1.6 billion people.
So today, I’m officially pivoting Kaya Labs which is my side hustle research and development entity to focus on this challenge for the next 10 years.
During my spare time when I’m not working on my official work, I will be working with a group of architects and builders to develop the dream home. I would like to build the house in such a way that it becomes a model for other houses that can be built in my community and other similar environments.