Cape Town budgets for backyards
THE City of Cape Town is to spend millions of rand in upgrading backyard and informal settlements over the next three years.
In the past few years, informal dwellings have mushroomed, presenting a fire danger to the city, which is most at risk in the dry, summer season.
According to the City of Cape Town’s disaster risk-management department quarterly report, more than 6‚000 Capetonians were affected by fires that damaged or destroyed their homes in the first quarter of this year.
Among the majority affected by this problem, a total of 5‚913 live in informal settlements, where 1‚718 homes were damaged.
In 2001, 4.3% of residents in Cape Town lived in backyard dwellings. This shot up to 7% by 2011, while 13.5% of Cape Town residents live in informal settlements, data from Statistics SA’s Household Survey show.
Over the years, housing has been a service-delivery sticking point in the Mother City, which has, like other municipalities around the country, faced protests over the issue. In its draft budget for 2018-19 for human settlements, the city proposes to spend R333m to service council-unit backyards and upgrade informal settlements.
The draft budget still has to be approved after community consultations have been done.
Cape Town’s electricity services department also plans to spend R105m in the next two financial years to service backyards and informal settlements.
Benedicta van Minnen, the city’s mayoral committee member for human settlements, said since the start of the first pilot projects in Factreton and Hanover Park in 2012 and 2013, the metro had rolled out services such as toilets, wash basins, electricity and wheelie bins to thousands of residents living in backyards.
“There are approximately 45,000 backyard dwellers residing on council property and we are doing everything to extend basic services to these residents to improve their living conditions.”
Ms van Minnen said the city was the only metro that had a programme to extend services to backyard dwellers living on councilowned properties. The housing need was acute and the current delivery model, where the government was the sole provider of mostly costly brick and cement structures, was unsustainable.