Laura Garises, a twenty-two-year-old, never had access to running water and grid electricity while growing up in her grandmother's house.

 Unfortunately, her hopes of seeing these amenities in their household were shattered when the City of Windhoek introduced debt cancellation. The family, residing on ERF 3837 Max Eichab Street in Damara Location, inherited the debt from their grandparents, who were recipients of the free housing scheme during the apartheid regime. Garises, who lives with her fifty-year-old asthmatic mother, is burdened with a municipal bill of over N$100,000.