The city’s worst nightmare has come true. It has had to accept it faces the enormous challenge of providing housing for 400,000 families in Cape Town.
This figure has been confirmed with the merging of the housing allocation lists of the city and the department of housing. There was initial scepticism that the figure could not be that high.
There are 150 000 names on the city’s housing waiting list. There are another 150,000 on the national housing department. It is estimated that a further 100,000 families who have not registered for a house at all, are also in need.
‘It is not just a number. It is people who need homes’
The council committee on housing, city housing officials and the national housing department thrashed out the city’s housing backlog on Tuesday. They confirmed the problem was bigger than originally thought.
City mayor Helen Zille said she was still shocked by the extent of the crisis.
“I’ve got over the initial shock but this is still a very substantial challenge. It is not just a number. It is people who need homes,” she said.
Zille said the city’s old methods of providing houses could not address the crisis. She was now focusing her efforts on “thinking out of the box”.
The biggest challenge in dealing with the crisis is identifying and accessing land.
The true extent of the crisis emerged last month. Consultants compiling a database for provincial government after a housing registration drive earlier this year told the city council housing committee that preliminary figures indicated that the backlog was in the region of 400,000, despite a small percentage of overlap with the city housing list.
The city had been working on a figure of 260,000.
Housing portfolio committee chairman Neil Ross said the city’s list has since been refined. According to the city database, 150,000 are awaiting housing.
The two housing lists are expected to be fully merged within the next two weeks and the housing committee will then consider a report on the next steps.
Ross said the DA administration would have to “up its game”, and set its targets higher, to provide 20 000 housing opportunities a year as opposed to the current target of 7,000.
Ross said the city would never be able to provide houses for all and would have to aim for providing “housing opportunities”, which included getting land and servicing it.
Development Action Group (DAG), a NGO which facilitates the provision of houses in poor communities, said the crisis had been underestimated, and that 400,000 would have been a more accurate reflection of the problem.
Another housing NGO, Habitat for Humanity, said it had not conducted a housing assessment survey but it believed the number of those in need could be even more than 400 000.
Habitat for Humanity’s regional programme director for the Western Cape, Thembi Sithole, said the major problem for NGOs wanting to help build houses was access to government subsidies and land.
“We have the capacity. We have the people ready to build, but we don’t have land and it takes time to get subsidies,” she said.
DAG Programme Manager Shamil Manie said alternative solutions to the housing crisis had to be considered. She said informal settlements could be upgraded with services, and job opportunities and public infrastructure could be made more accessible to the people living there.
Housing authorities also needed to consider clustering low-income housing along transport routes rather than pushing these developments to the outskirts of the city.
The city’s population needing housing grows by about 48,000 a year.
Tuesday’s meeting also decided that the city’s housing allocation policy would have to be amended, such as basing allocation on the time spent waiting for a house and whether a housing project was intended for a specific community.
The committee also decided that housing waiting lists would no longer be published or made available to political parties.
“They tend to be misused for party political purposes. We don’t want politics to impinge on housing delivery,” said Ross.
Those on waiting lists would be informed in writing that they were on the list, as well as through public notices. Those on waiting lists would be requested to update their details if and when these changed.
The recommendations are expected to be taken to council for endorsement by October.
This figure has been confirmed with the merging of the housing allocation lists of the city and the department of housing. There was initial scepticism that the figure could not be that high.
There are 150 000 names on the city’s housing waiting list. There are another 150,000 on the national housing department. It is estimated that a further 100,000 families who have not registered for a house at all, are also in need.
‘It is not just a number. It is people who need homes’
The council committee on housing, city housing officials and the national housing department thrashed out the city’s housing backlog on Tuesday. They confirmed the problem was bigger than originally thought.
City mayor Helen Zille said she was still shocked by the extent of the crisis.
“I’ve got over the initial shock but this is still a very substantial challenge. It is not just a number. It is people who need homes,” she said.
Zille said the city’s old methods of providing houses could not address the crisis. She was now focusing her efforts on “thinking out of the box”.
The biggest challenge in dealing with the crisis is identifying and accessing land.
The true extent of the crisis emerged last month. Consultants compiling a database for provincial government after a housing registration drive earlier this year told the city council housing committee that preliminary figures indicated that the backlog was in the region of 400,000, despite a small percentage of overlap with the city housing list.
The city had been working on a figure of 260,000.
Housing portfolio committee chairman Neil Ross said the city’s list has since been refined. According to the city database, 150,000 are awaiting housing.
The two housing lists are expected to be fully merged within the next two weeks and the housing committee will then consider a report on the next steps.
Ross said the DA administration would have to “up its game”, and set its targets higher, to provide 20 000 housing opportunities a year as opposed to the current target of 7,000.
Ross said the city would never be able to provide houses for all and would have to aim for providing “housing opportunities”, which included getting land and servicing it.
Development Action Group (DAG), a NGO which facilitates the provision of houses in poor communities, said the crisis had been underestimated, and that 400,000 would have been a more accurate reflection of the problem.
Another housing NGO, Habitat for Humanity, said it had not conducted a housing assessment survey but it believed the number of those in need could be even more than 400 000.
Habitat for Humanity’s regional programme director for the Western Cape, Thembi Sithole, said the major problem for NGOs wanting to help build houses was access to government subsidies and land.
“We have the capacity. We have the people ready to build, but we don’t have land and it takes time to get subsidies,” she said.
DAG Programme Manager Shamil Manie said alternative solutions to the housing crisis had to be considered. She said informal settlements could be upgraded with services, and job opportunities and public infrastructure could be made more accessible to the people living there.
Housing authorities also needed to consider clustering low-income housing along transport routes rather than pushing these developments to the outskirts of the city.
The city’s population needing housing grows by about 48,000 a year.
Tuesday’s meeting also decided that the city’s housing allocation policy would have to be amended, such as basing allocation on the time spent waiting for a house and whether a housing project was intended for a specific community.
The committee also decided that housing waiting lists would no longer be published or made available to political parties.
“They tend to be misused for party political purposes. We don’t want politics to impinge on housing delivery,” said Ross.
Those on waiting lists would be informed in writing that they were on the list, as well as through public notices. Those on waiting lists would be requested to update their details if and when these changed.
The recommendations are expected to be taken to council for endorsement by October.
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