Grim picture painted of City’s growing housing crisis
A REPORT released by the Provincial Economic Review and Outlook 2018 paints a worrying picture of an ever-growing housing crisis in Cape Town. The report states that by the end of July this year, a total of 578 173 households in the Western Cape had registered their demand for housing.
The biggest share of the demand, at 61.5%, was based within the City of Cape Town due to the concentration of the provincial population in the metropole.
Mayoral committee member for transport and urban development Brett Herron said: “The dire need for housing and security of tenure are, in my opinion, the biggest challenges South Africa is facing at this moment.
“The desperation of those in need resonates in illegal land invasions, evictions, violent protests and discord between communities.
“Local governments bear the brunt of the pressure as more people are moving to cities in search of better lives and job opportunities. Cape Town is no exception.”
Herron said as of September 27, up to 345 529 people were registered on their database who were in need of and qualify for a housing opportunity.
“We estimate at least 650 000 families will qualify for and require some form of state-subsidised housing… over the next 20 years,” Herron said.
More than half of the informal dwellings were within the Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain planning district, with 134 493 dwellings last year.
Other areas with large numbers of informal dwellings include the Cape Flats, with at least 44 848, Tygerberg, with over 17 123 and Blaauwberg, with 16 699. Table Bay was estimated to have he least, with 9 584 informal dwellings.
The report indicated that informal dwellings remained a cause for concern for municipalities due to the substantial cost to provide free basic services. There were health risks, with children exposed to bad living conditions and crime.
The average number of people per household within planning districts in the Cape metro has remained stable at about four persons per household over the last decade.
“I want to reiterate that everything that we are doing is geared towards reversing the legacy of apartheid spatial planning and the transformation of Cape Town’s spatial form to promote transport-oriented development and to provide affordable and inclusionary housing on well-located land close to public transport and job opportunities,” Herron said.
Social Justice Coalition’s co-head of programmes, Musa Gwebani, said: “What the City does not understand is that there are other alternative ways to provide housing; for example, initiate integrated housing in the inner City.”
Gwebani added that there were many reasons why people lived in informal dwellings, the crux of which was that renting had become unregulated. “That is the main reason pushing people out into the streets, and the high cost of living has forced people to occupy land because they can’t afford rent any more,” said Gwebani.