Census 2022: City of Tshwane reports highest homeless population

The census showed that 15,776 130 (88.5%) households lived in formal dwellings in 2022, while 560,415 (3.1%) lived in traditional dwellings and 1.435,535 (8.1%) in informal dwellings. The average household size was 3.5 people per household.

When it comes to services, 59.7% of households had access to piped water inside their homes compared to 46.3% in 2011, while 70.8% had a flush toilet, 2.6% used chemical toilets, 21.9% used a pit toilet, 2.1% a bucket toilet, 1.0% ‘other’ and 1.6% had no toilet to use.

The main source of energy for lighting for 94.7% of households was electricity, compared to 84.7% in 2011. Only 0.3% used gas, 0.9% used paraffin, 3.2% used candles, 0.7% used solar power, 0.1% used ‘other’ and 0.2% had no light at all. For cooking, 64.9% used electricity, 25.7% gas, 2.7% paraffin, 6.1% wood, 0.2% coal, 3 521 people used animal dung, 0.1% used solar power, 15 346 ‘other and 0.2% animal dung.

When it came to refuse removal, 66.3% indicated the local authority removes the refuse at least once a week, while 1.3% said it happens less often where they live, 1.6% used a communal refuse dump, 3.3% used a communal container or collection point, 22.3% had their own refuse dump, 4.5% had no refuse disposal and 0.7% indicated ‘other’.

The census also recorded 55,719 homeless individuals. Most of them (70.1%) are male, while 29.9% were female. Homelessness was more prevalent in metropolitan areas (74.1%) compared to non-metropolitan areas (25.9%).

The City of Tshwane recorded the highest proportion of homeless people (18.1%), followed by the City of Johannesburg at 15.6%. The top five reasons for homelessness were job loss or no income for males and females (41.3%), followed by alcohol and drug abuse (25%).

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General population health and functioning

Census 2022 also profiled the general health and functioning of the population for people older than five based on a set of six Washington Group (WG) functional questions about seeing, hearing, communicating, walking or climbing stairs, remembering or concentrating and selfcare.

The findings on degree of difficulty in functioning showed that there was an increase in people reporting no difficulty and conversely a decrease in people reporting some and a lot of difficulty in functioning, as well as those unable to function in a specific domain.

The results further showed that over the period 2011–2022, there was a decrease of approximately one percentage point from 7.4% in 2011 to 6% in 2022.

The data shows that disability varied by sex, population group and geographical area. Sex variations showed that disability was more prevalent among females (7.0%) compared to males (4.9%), a pattern consistent in both Censuses 2011 and 2022.

Population group dynamics showed that disability was more prevalent among the white population (9.5%), followed by the Indian/Asian population (6.5%). Over the period 2011–2022, the black African and coloured populations recorded a decline in disability prevalence.

The Western Cape is the only province that experienced a slight increase in 2022 in terms of disability prevalence compared to all other provinces, from 5.3% in 2011 to 5.4% in 2022.

The Census 2022 results indicated a decrease in the use of all assistive devices compared to 2011, with the exception of prosthesis/artificial limbs which was not one of the assistive devices measured in Census 2011.