Speech by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General and Mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town
13 September 2021
FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY FIVE INNER CITY SITES WERE RELEASED FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING. THEY SHOULD BE BUSTLING CONSTRUCTION SITES TODAY BUT THEY’RE NOT.
The GOOD Party has a real and achievable plan to address Cape Town’s housing shortage and unstitch apartheid racial-spatial planning.
The plan is based on national and international research by the GOOD policy unit; the common sense that maintaining apartheid spatial division is unsustainable and unjust; and our experience in council of successfully accelerating housing delivery and matching suitable inner city sites to developers of affordable housing.
The three pillars of the plan are:
- Developing affordable housing on vacant state-owned land in well-located areas;
- Increasing security of tenure in informal settlements so residents have comfort to invest in their own homes;
- Professionalising the delivery of subsidised homes, preferably in infill areas as close to business and industrial areas as possible, through proper contract management and budgeting.
Affordable housing
We are announcing the plan today on what happens to be the fourth anniversary of the announcement then Mayor of Cape Town Patricia de Lille and I made of requests for proposals for five sites we had identified right here in and alongside our City Centre.
On that day we released the Woodstock, Salt River and Inner City Affordable Housing Prospectus. The five identified sites would have accommodated about 2000 social housing units. Thirteen development proposals were received from the private sector and social housing partners.
We wanted the City to begin leveraging its assets – well-located parcels of developable land – for public good, in partnership with experts in that arena.
But conservative councillors in the City opposed to our transformation and integration agenda had the numbers to frustrate the project. It led to our resigning from the City. As soon as we’d gone, the projects were cancelled.
South African towns and cities still function as they did under apartheid, with very little residential spatial integration and a stubborn and persistent pattern of exclusion.
In Cape Town the cost of housing is prohibitive for the vast majority of our residents and the state’s interventions – the housing that has been built for those who qualify for subsidised housing – has been insufficient. It has furthermore entrenched old patterns of poor, mostly black, residents being housed in remote townships on the outskirts of the city.
Those who are opposed to spatial justice and integration often raise their anxieties about the impact of people of colour living in affordable homes on the value of their properties. The truth is that, appropriately managed, property values in integrated communities should increase.
We have unfinished business in the City of Cape Town, and resuscitating the development of affordable housing in good areas is a good place to start.
Security of tenure in informal settlements
Although South Africa has built several million fully subsidised homes since 1994, this number has proven hopelessly inadequate to keep pace with urbanisation. The consequence is ever-expanding informal settlements without basic planning and infrastructure, and neighbourhoods that are unfit for human habitation.
GOOD’s plan is to allocate new subsidised homes according to the waiting list. Those who have been waiting longest must be prioritised.
On the other, security of tenure in informal settlements must be increased so that residents have the comfort to invest in their homes at their own pace. Municipalities have critical roles in this regard to install proper bulk infrastructure – that is, roads, drainage, water reticulation and sewerage – and to provide similar maintenance and cleansing services provided in established suburbs.
Coupled to tenure security is facilitating peoples’ movements from far-flung townships and informal settlements to work, university, clinic or public offices such as Home Affairs. As things stand in Cape Town, the poorer you are, the further away you live and the more you must spend on transport.
We have done our sums. To facilitate people’s movement from far-flung neighbourhoods, GOOD will integrate public transport systems and provide free off-peak travel to whoever needs it.
Delivery of subsidised homes
In January 2017 I became responsible for housing in the City of Cape Town. We made a commitment to turn housing delivery around. And we did.
We studied the grant system, and its multiplicity of provisions identified a source of additional funds, and my team increased the delivery of new housing from 4 293 units in the 2015/16 financial year to 6 028 housing opportunities the next year and 8 095 the year after that. We nearly doubled delivery in just two years.
This was the first time Cape Town not only met its housing delivery targets but exceeded them.
Through a combination of new BNG, Gap, social housing and new services sites, our team was on track to keep accelerating delivery. In this current 2020/21 year, more than 14 000 homes would be delivered – not the 5 100 which is the City’s current target.
Last year almost 10 000 housing opportunities should have been delivered, but the City only managed 3 523.
Cape Town can deliver more under the national housing programme – as we have proven – and it can also achieve more by working with the private sector, the affordable housing players and social housing companies.
They need a reliable government that is open for business and ready to partner with them.
Cape Town has the skills, the resources and the assets to make real progress. We cannot be held back by those afraid of the dark.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Ms Karabo Tledima
Cell: 0617943819
Email: karabot@forgood.org.za