Mayor inks social housing deals
THE City wants more innovative and environmentally-friendly options when it comes to building affordable and social housing in Cape Town.
This is what Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said at the signing of agreements with 25 social housing companies yesterday. Eleven sites were recently identified by the City of Cape Town to build affordable and social housing on.
“You can’t just go brick and mortar while there are so many alternatives for building houses.
“We need to look at alternative building methods. I have seen beautiful modular housing being built in Stellenbosch.”
She said she was going to put a demo of a modular house on a trailer to show people in informal settlements. “But we need the help of social housing partners like yourself. We also want to look at building with density, meaning we can build up to eight and nine storeys.”
De Lille asked the social housing companies to assist her in finding rental housing, as she received calls from people who are looking for it.
“I understand that some of the companies don’t have any housing stock under their management as yet and as the City we are pleased to be providing an opportunity to emerging businesses to undertake their first development and management of stock and tenancies.
“The inner city has become unaffordable due to increased land prices and property market trends. Government cannot tackle this alone and we need public-private partnerships that have proven to be successful with many other housing projects before.
“It is one of our key priorities over the next five years to drive greater integration, as outlined in the new five-year Integrated Development Plan (IDP). That is why the adoption of the Organisational Development and Transformation Plan in August 2016 gave us the opportunity to establish the Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA).” Brett Herron, mayoral committee member for transport and urban development, said they wanted to ramp up the delivery of social housing. Lew Steainbank from Royal Stock Housing, one of the social housing partners, said: “There is a huge need for social housing in Cape Town.”