Housing vows not believed
Residents believe city’s timelines are stretched
ORGANISATIONS and evictees from homes in Woodstock and Salt River do not believe the promises made by the City of Cape Town about social and affordable housing. This comes after the city mayoral committee member for transport and urban development, Brett Herron, announced on Tuesday that they will be building 956 houses in Woodstock and Salt River.
The sites that were identified are in Dillon Lane and Pine Road in Woodstock.
Herron said the City of Cape Town has a housing waiting list of 320 000 people.
Shane van der Mescht, the house leader of old Woodstock Hospital now known as Cissie Gool, said that there has been a lot of talk about social housing in Woodstock.
“The city will be stretching the timelines. This building has been earmarked for affordable housing before, but nothing has since happened. There is a housing crisis. The people who have been evicted from Woodstock need transitional housing,” he said.
“I listened to the city’s plans, but building social housing takes a lot of time.
“People need housing now. Just the other day we accommodated a family with a 4-month-old baby. They have been living in a car. There are currently 20 people staying in the Cissie Gool building, whom we have accommodated.
“But what is very important is that people on the ground are included when plans are made about housing. In other words, they must engage people.
“I cannot see why the city cannot engage provincial government about empty buildings in Cape Town, which can be used to accommodate people,” he said.
Francois Viruly, a property economist, explained that the current situation in Cape Town is that people live in 40m2 houses, travel 40km to work and spend 40% of their money on transport to work.
“We still have the legacy of apartheid and we need to alter that.
“Inner city housing has become important. In the inner city the delivery of social housing will have to be in the form of highdensity buildings. It has worked in Johannesburg.
“The only difference is that the flats will be smaller. And when you build new housing in the inner city 20% of it needs to be affordable housing. It happens in much of Europe and is working. There is also a market for affordable housing in the inner city,” he said.
Paul Jackson chief executive of TUHF, said that their company has seen how small landlords have been providing a lot more affordable housing than the government.
“This has worked in the Johannesburg CBD. Last year they produced 48 225 affordable renting units. The rentals of these flats are between R1 200 to R4 000. Which is affordable to people,” he said.