The City of Cape Town has unveiled a two year plan to provide essential services to all 222 informal settlements within its boundary.
The plan, which would see every household given access to water, sanitation and area lighting, would cost R63.4 million, mayor Helen Zille told a media briefing.
She also announced that the city’s metro police were forming a unit to combat land invasions.
“The city will adopt a policy of zero tolerance on land invasions,” she said.
The city has priority-ranked every settlement in terms of factors including length of settlement, flooding and fire risk, and the availability of water and sanitation.
The list shows that 47,166 of the 135,693 households need to the re-located, some of them because shacks are so closely packed that there is no way to provide services.
At the top of the list is Kanana, partly located in what Zille said was a “swamp” in Gugulethu.
The plan calls for relocation of the whole settlement to homes already earmarked in the N2 Gateway project.
Controversial Hout Bay settlement Imizamo Yethu is 27th on the list.
The plan calls for it to be “de-densified” by 3,064 of its current 5,460 dwellings, but Zille said this would be accomplished by consultation, in a process “completely different” from forced removals.
She said a later phase of the plan would involve fully formalising the settlements by providing security of tenure and assisting with the completion of homes.
When it came to homes, those who had been waiting the longest would get helped first.
“In this regard, we are developing a policy to give preference in new developments to backyarders who have not tried to jump the housing waiting list by invading land,” she said.
“And those people who do try to jump the housing queue by invading land in future will be dropped to the bottom of the waiting list.”
The city says it needs some 1,000 hectares of land for the re-locations.
Mayco member for housing Dan Plato told the briefing the Western Cape provincial government and national government would have to release the large tracts of land they controlled in the city.
They would also have to provide funding.
The city’s manager for housing and land, Basil Davidson, said farmland on the urban fringe was going for about R1 million a hectare before improvements were factored in, which was ten times Gauteng prices and 14 times those around Durban.
Some 50 to 60,000 people migrate to Cape Town every year, many from the Eastern Cape, but internal growth also places a demand on housing.
The housing backlog in the city at the moment is 400,000 units. - Sapa
The plan, which would see every household given access to water, sanitation and area lighting, would cost R63.4 million, mayor Helen Zille told a media briefing.
She also announced that the city’s metro police were forming a unit to combat land invasions.
“The city will adopt a policy of zero tolerance on land invasions,” she said.
The city has priority-ranked every settlement in terms of factors including length of settlement, flooding and fire risk, and the availability of water and sanitation.
The list shows that 47,166 of the 135,693 households need to the re-located, some of them because shacks are so closely packed that there is no way to provide services.
At the top of the list is Kanana, partly located in what Zille said was a “swamp” in Gugulethu.
The plan calls for relocation of the whole settlement to homes already earmarked in the N2 Gateway project.
Controversial Hout Bay settlement Imizamo Yethu is 27th on the list.
The plan calls for it to be “de-densified” by 3,064 of its current 5,460 dwellings, but Zille said this would be accomplished by consultation, in a process “completely different” from forced removals.
She said a later phase of the plan would involve fully formalising the settlements by providing security of tenure and assisting with the completion of homes.
When it came to homes, those who had been waiting the longest would get helped first.
“In this regard, we are developing a policy to give preference in new developments to backyarders who have not tried to jump the housing waiting list by invading land,” she said.
“And those people who do try to jump the housing queue by invading land in future will be dropped to the bottom of the waiting list.”
The city says it needs some 1,000 hectares of land for the re-locations.
Mayco member for housing Dan Plato told the briefing the Western Cape provincial government and national government would have to release the large tracts of land they controlled in the city.
They would also have to provide funding.
The city’s manager for housing and land, Basil Davidson, said farmland on the urban fringe was going for about R1 million a hectare before improvements were factored in, which was ten times Gauteng prices and 14 times those around Durban.
Some 50 to 60,000 people migrate to Cape Town every year, many from the Eastern Cape, but internal growth also places a demand on housing.
The housing backlog in the city at the moment is 400,000 units. - Sapa
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