Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General and Mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town
20 September 2021
In the days and hours before the next rains arrive in Cape Town, the DA run City’s Enforcement Unit is once again sweeping homeless people out of sight. Of course, many residents of Cape Town are very concerned about rising homelessness.
I too am very worried about rising homelessness, but treating the symptom rather than the causes is not going to solve anything. Fining, warning, and removing people’s possessions are acts of cruelty rather than acts of compassionate solution.
Before we look to solutions, we should just review some of the causes and misconceptions around homelessness.
Who are Cape Town’s homeless?
Cape Town’s homeless are our residents – residents who, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons and challenges, cannot access secure shelter.
The calls for homeless people to “go back to the Eastern Cape” or “back to Africa” expose the underlying misinformation, racism and xenophobia that some political leaders want to ascribe to the rising challenge of poverty and homelessness.
The City of Cape Town’s own surveys show that the very vast majority of homeless people in Cape Town are Capetonians. By race, homeless people in Cape Town are 61% coloured, 25% black and 13% white.
Causes of homelessness:
There are many causes of homelessness and each person’s journey to a horrible life on the street is unique and personal. Often the reasons include rising household costs, rising rents, physical and sexual abuse, as well as mental health and substance addiction challenges.
The best way to reduce homelessness is to keep those who are in secure housing housed; and then to shelter, support and reintegrate wherever possible those who have become homeless.
Shortage of thousands of shelter spaces:
There is a grave misconception that the City has enough shelters for all the homeless people. This is a peddled lie that the Western Cape’s Department of Social Development has confirmed is untrue. In their 14th February 2020 reply to my enquiry on the status of homeless and shelters in Cape Town, Minister Fernandez confirmed that 3999 people had been counted living on the streets, with just “1003 funded bed spaces” and 230 places in Culemborg Safe Space available to shelter them. 1233 spaces for the counted 3999 homeless.
NGOs however estimated that the real number of homeless in Cape Town – before Covid – was more than 14,000 as many homeless people sleep in hidden places to avoid being robbed or abused by criminals. This is also why many choose to stay close to SAPS stations – they are more vulnerable to crime than those in houses.
Irrespective of which estimate of homelessness is used, the facts are that there was a shortage of thousands of spaces for the City’s homeless when in 2019 the City’s Law Enforcement Unit began to fine and harass them.
What are the solutions?
A multitude of interventions are needed to reduce homelessness. Water and electricity costs must come down to ensure that those living in homes can afford to remain there and also afford food to eat. It is criminal that many families now must choose between paying for water, electricity or food.
The City must also rapidly increase the delivery of affordable housing. I nearly doubled delivery of housing opportunities between 2016 and 2018, but resigned when the DA began to stop the projects I had initiated. Last year, the City delivered 6,000 less housing opportunities than it should have; next year, it has reduced its target by 9,000. Fifteen thousand families who should have had access to new housing opportunities have lost out.
To support and begin to reintegrate the people who are already homeless, we must shift from criminalisation to care. We need social support to assist with mental health issues, rehabilitation support to deal with those with substance addiction, and we must fund more shelters so that more people living on the street can be provided with secure, safe shelter.
On Friday Law Enforcement sent a dozen vehicles and dozens of City employees to deal with about 10 homeless people in Bothasig. Today they are doing the same in District 6. Not for the first time are conservative whites removing coloured and black South Africans from District 6.
We know there are not enough shelters. Even the DA matriculants will know that 14,000 does not fit in to 1200. If you see that fellow residents and citizens are being removed from your neighbourhood, ask where they are going.
We cannot be silent in the face of injustice.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Brett Herron
GOOD City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate
082 518 3264
Wilfred Solomons
084 711 7709