Risking health for rental housing: Reviewing service access in the informal backyard rental sector.

Informal backyard rentals (IBRs) constitute South Africa's fastest growing housing subsector, flourishing within a relative research vacuum and without national policy intervention to address the vulnerabilities of stakeholders to the health risks potentially presented. This article reviewed the literature on IBRs, focussing on past policies and interventions, general characteristics, infrastructure and service access to inform an analysis of potential health risks from the existing literature to guide future research and policy-making. Research followed a qualitative approach to review IBR literature dating after 2004.