Low-cost housing activists lose Sea Point land battle

A ROBUST response was promised by affordable housing activists yesterday after Western Cape premier Helen Zille’s executive decided to go ahead with the sale of a school site in Sea Point.

Reclaim the City spokesman Daneel Knoetze said the decision on Tafelberg School was “unjust and an insult to black and coloured working class people throughout Cape Town, who are the vast majority of residents in our city”.

The buildings are being sold to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School‚ despite a spirited campaign by Reclaim the City‚ which wanted the site used for affordable housing

Knoetze said the Western Cape government had made plain its intention to capitalise on public assets at all costs‚ in the face of considerable public opposition.

“They have shown a deep contempt for the principle of using public land to reverse apartheid spatial planning,” Knoetze said.

“We will never accept the stripping of well-located public land, land that could and should be used for affordable housing, to private entities.”

The executive said it had identified the Helen Bowden Nurses Home, part of the Somerset Hospital precinct near the Cape Town Stadium in Green Point, and the old Woodstock Hospital site for affordable housing development.

Spokesman Michael Mpofu said the Green Point property had a high cross-subsidisation potential for the viable building of affordable housing.

“The cabinet instructed that any proposed disposal or use of the old Woodstock Hospital site be brought to cabinet for its consideration‚ with the intention to resolve that affordable housing be included on the site‚ as a whole or in part,” he said.