The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) believes the money it owes to the Private Student Housing Association (PSHA) is not a material cause of the sector's current housing challenges.
In January 2025, the PSHA released a statement warning that it would not open its doors to NSFAS-funded students if the financial aid scheme fails to pay an outstanding R44 million owed to landlords.
NSFAS Administrator, Freeman Novamlo says it was unfortunate that the amount reported in the media was incorrect.
I can confirm that there is an amount of R44 Million that was still outstanding recently and the teams are processing that payment.
The administrator admitted that while money is owed to landlords, it is not R44 Million. NSFAS is meeting with stakeholders to determine the actual amounts owed to accommodation providers.
Our records show something different to that number which is why in the past I said in the public media, to deal with specific matters like those, you need to sit around the table, show the invoices, whether there have been any payments and so on.
The payment of private accommodation providers is critical to the funding landscape. Institutions don’t have enough accommodation facilities to house all their students and require private accommodation landlords to fill the gap.
The consequence of this challenge was on full display at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Earlier this week, hundreds of students picketed at the campus to protest the lack of available housing.
While Nomvalo says the outstanding payment of private accommodation payments did not have a material impact on the challenges facing institutions like CPUT, universities simply can’t house all their students. Disgruntled students often direct their anger at the institution for what they deem the university's failure.
While CPUT says they’ve cleared backlogs of unhoused students, new students constantly require assistance with housing.
Accommodation Accreditation
The government bursary scheme launched an accommodation pilot project to enhance the availability of accredited housing for students at 17 South African universities and 23 TVET colleges. This project is part of NSFAS's shift to ensure safer, quality student housing by working directly with accredited private providers, accessible through a new digital portal.
This system is designed to support students in finding accommodations that meet the set standards of safety and quality, though it’s faced challenges with limited access and functionality, sparking criticism from groups like the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA).
OUTA warned that NSFAS has not accredited enough accommodations to house all students who require accommodation.
Nomvalo acknowledged that an insufficient number of beds have been accredited. However, this is part of a larger challenge in which years of underinvestment in accommodation and increasing enrollment numbers have created the current accommodation shortage.
As a matter of fact, there is a shortage of student accommodation across the country so NSFAS has accredited X number of beds but there aren't enough beds to be accredited to start with so the context of understanding student accommodation and the demand has got to be understood really in the context that there has been an increase in the enrollment numbers in institutions of high learning.
Nomvalo assured accommodation providers that the housing of NSFAS-funded students will be paid for by the government bursary scheme.
