GOOD welcomes the Constitutional Court’s judgment on the City of Cape Town’s failure to implement a coherent housing plan and plan for the inevitable displacement caused by gentrification.
The court ultimately rules that where people live matters. It has always mattered; that’s why the Group Areas Act was such a critical apartheid lever.
Of the City’s current approach to affordable and emergency housing, the Court said its, “… broader vision appears to be a thoroughly misguided and ill-conceived project rooted in the perpetuation of spatial segregation and the infamous influx control, in an attempt to inexplicably “preserve” the inner city by marginalising poor persons.”
The judgment confirms the duty of our governments’, at the various levels, to address inherited spatial injustice as part of their housing programmes.