More than 7 000 in City are homeless
MORE than 7 000 people are homeless in Cape Town.
This emerged in a study conducted by the City to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of homelessness and determine how to distribute resources in future to help the homeless.
Suzette Little, the Mayco member for social development and early childhood development, said this was the first such exercise by any municipality in South Africa.
The first phase of the project in 2014 saw fieldworkers conduct interviews with 2 670 street people over the age of 18 in various parts of the city to find out, among other things, the reasons for their migration to the street.
The second phase was the physical headcount over 10 days in May this year to determine how many people are displaced within Cape Town
Starting to shift the focus from punitive measures to social measures
and where they are located.
Fieldworkers counted 4 862 people living or sleeping on the street.
More than 2 500 were sleeping in shelters, bringing the overall total to 7 383.
Of those found sleeping on the street, 63 percent slept in the open on the pavement as opposed to under bridges, in parking lots, outside malls or other spaces.
The study also found that women were more likely to be found in shelters and men more likely to sleep on the streets.
In total, 50 percent of those surveyed were between the ages of 18 and 35, with more than 65 percent of those sampled born in Cape Town.
Little said the street people count coincides with a near R10 million investment in the directorate’s Street People Programme in this financial year. The budget for this programme has grown from R4.5m in 2013/14 to R9.7m in 2015/16.
In the last year, the City has assisted 613 street people to get off the streets.
“We have made tremendous strides in recent years in our efforts to holistically address the very complex phenome- non of hopelessness,” Little said. “It is not something that is unique to Cape Town, but I would like to think that we have charted a good course in how we address it.
“This includes the finalisation of our Street People Policy in 2013, the establishment of our Reintegration Unit at the end of 2014 and the partnerships we continue to build with non-government organi- sations working in this sector. We haven’t found a silver bullet, and there is no denying that we still have a long road ahead, but I am pleased with our progress thus far.”
However, Greg Andrew of the Street People’s Forum yesterday expressed his unhappiness at the lack of consultation with the civil organisation and NGOs involved in the study.
He also said some City directorates “were not helped by others” who did not care about the homeless.
“What the directorate is starting to do is shift the City’s focus as a whole from punitive measures to social measures that work, but that doesn’t mean that the other parts of the City are coming online yet,” Andrew said.