Johannesburg — YOU need the vision of dreamer as well as the "can do" attitude of the business executive to bring vandalised and hijacked buildings back to life and turn them into affordable and attractive housing.

It is fortunate, then, that Rory Gallagher, CEO of the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco), has displayed that unusual mix of traits since his student days.

After spending his high school years at Westville High in Durban, Gallagher spent six years at university, finishing his masters in town and regional planning at the end of 1992.

"The night I handed in my dissertation, I climbed into my Beetle and drove up to Johannesburg. The car eventually caught alight, like oil-leaking Beetles often do, and I had to get rid of it. But I have lived here ever since," he says.

It wasn't the first time he'd made the trek. In 1987, Gallagher climbed into his rust-ridden beetle and drove all the way to Sun City, with the icy winter air whooshing through the holes in the floor, to watch his favourite heavy metal band, Black Sabbath.

The dedication bordering on obsession; the determination, and the faith in his practical ability to change a tyre in the middle of nowhere - all these elements make him perfectly suited to his job in the city.

Though he heads up an increasingly busy entity within the city council, there is still a trace of the spirit of adventure that drove him back then.

Joshco was set up by the council in 2003 to help eradicate the housing backlog in the city, which is constantly strained by urbanisation.

Gallagher left his job as a researcher and writer for the provincial government to join the entity in October 2005, taking over from then acting CEO Sisulu Jwili.

Working in and with such a dynamic city as Johannesburg, Gallagher has to be extremely organised, and he is - his neat and orderly office is testament to that.

He believes in keeping emotion out of the challenge of providing housing for those of Johannesburg's residents who otherwise would not be able to find decent accommodation.

He is no bleeding heart, however. "For these developments to work, you need paying tenants - otherwise they are bound to fail," he says with conviction. "There are certain steps we follow when we embark on a project to save a building and bring it back to life. There is a process and we just follow it."

Gallagher loves his job and does not take it for granted.

After he graduated from the University of Natal as a town and regional planner, he couldn't find work, and had to enter the sales industry while he looked for a job doing the kind of work he'd been trained to do.

It was this experience, perhaps, that gave him the sensitivity to know that no job is done by one person alone, and he praises the efforts of his team, particularly in the rental section, which ensures that tenants defaulting on rent are kept to the barest minimum.

"Though Joshco is an entity of Johannesburg city council and has no private shareholding, from a governance point of view the board of directors does not include any city official, employee or councillor.

"Joshco's board of directors is ultimately appointed by the city mayor, but they are all from outside the city.

"It is a registered Pty Ltd company and it functions according to those conventional requirements, but we account for what we do for the city", Gallagher says.

"Joshco was set up because the city has objectives to meet - particularly for rental housing.

"The company was charged with creating more rental housing as well as taking over the city's housing rental stock. It was also set up to manage its old hostels into family units and to create more inner-city housing," he says.

In recent months, Gallagher says, Joshco has been busy finding tenants for three newly reclaimed buildings in the inner city, including Raschers in Loveday Street.

"Thanks partly to private investment that part of town has been coming up, but the biggest problem in the inner city are the blocks that are sectional title.

"When rental property owners lost confidence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they brought in agents who converted the buildings to sectional title and sold them off at bargain basement prices.

"But, unfortunately, the problem was that the body corporates did not function in those sectionalised blocks."

Before Gallagher joined Joshco and was working for the provincial government, one of his jobs was providing social housing for the inner city.

"I had a large number of building owners that wanted to sell off their buildings. Some of the units in those old blocks in 1996 were being sold for R30 000 apiece.

"But these blocks are now problematic. One of the private companies, Afco ... complains that some of its investments are adjacent to these large sectionalised blocks and that it is really difficult to get them upgraded," he says.

Gallagher talks somewhat wistfully of an old building in Smit Street that Joshco tried to take over, which was gutted by fire "six or seven years ago".

"But we could not because of the fact that the units are individually owned. Trying to negotiate with 65 individuals who are all in arrears with the city is difficult. But it can be done. This building is a treasure.

"It is like Whitehall Court in Killarney - not as smart, of course, but it has an inner courtyard."

"The key to the inner city, Gallagher tells me, "comes down to private investment, sorting out the poorly run sectionalised buildings. Security is also a concern but all you need to do is to get bobbies on the beat. And of course there is traffic. Five o'clock on a Friday is a bit like Lagos. We need to manage the taxis," he says.

Apart from Joshco's inner- city properties, the company has rental housing developments all over the city, including in Kliptown in Soweto.

But its "jewel in the crown" - and clearly a source of some personal pride to Gallagher - is Citrine Court in the Bellavista Estate, Turffontein. This 16- storey building was a dilapidated eyesore when Joshco took it over in 2007. It had become a haven for criminals. It was also infested with rats and seeping with sewage . Now the final touches are being put to the building, which has 78 two- bedroom units and one three- bedroom unit, which are ready to be put on the rental market.

Citrine Court cost about R22,7m to redevelop, just a fraction what it would have cost to demolish and rebuild, says Gallagher.

Adjacent to Citrine Court is a new 36-unit low-rise development to complement existing accommodation that is being upgraded. The city has spent R12m on this project.

In the past five years, Joshco has spent R712m on buying and renovating buildings and Gallagher, it seems, will not rest until the whole of the inner city is reclaimed and restored to the functioning area it once was.

For now, Joshco is absorbed with further inner-city projects. These are AA House on Wanderers Street, Europa on Loveday Street, Lynatex, which is behind the Jeppe police station, and Vanin Court on Smit Street in Hillbrow.

"The city is interested in looking at private investment in social housing.

" And with that, anything is possible," Gallagher tells me, as a dreamer's glint flashes in his eye, balanced by a look of practical determination.