600 hectares earmarked for 21,000 potential Cape Town housing opportunities - IOL

Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane says 600 hectares across 120 Cape Town land parcels could yield about 21 000 housing opportunities, while 162 583 beneficiaries have been on the city’s Housing Needs Register for at least five years.

“The total number of hectares on properties that are being prepared for implementation and release to the market is approximately 400 hectares on 31 land parcels,” she said.

Simelane revealed this when she was responding to parliamentary questions from ActionSA MP Dereleen James and MK Party MP Zelna Abader, who asked her about housing related matters in the City of Cape Town.

This came against the backdrop of GOOD Party mayoral candidate Brett Herron accusing the DA of using a long-delayed housing project as an election campaign, pointing out that the site had been earmarked for social housing nearly two decades ago.

On Monday, DA mayoral candidate and mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis used the Salt River Market site to launch his housing plan for another term as Cape Town mayor, three months after officially handing it over to Communicare.

Responding to questions about the announcement that the Western Cape government released land for the development of nearly 5,000 social and affordable housing opportunities, Simelane said the information obtained from the provincial Department of Infrastructure was that land was released for 4,380 social and affordable housing units.

“These projects are at various stages including procurement, enablement and de-risking to acquire requisite development rights,” she said.

Among the seven projects are Conradie Park, Oranjezicht, Leeulop, Stikland and Amandela Place.

“The process is still at its infancy and such details beyond what is provided above is currently not available,” she said about approved funding for each of the projects.

Simelane also said the timelines for implementation and completion for each of the developments were not available.

“Such information is currently not available but will be made available as soon as such is concluded by the affected parties.”

Simelane warned that there would be consequences for officials and implementing agents should any of the projects fail to meet their approved targets.

“We cannot pre-empt such consequences until at least the process is concluded and the necessary agreements are in place,” said the minister.

According to the minister, the Western Cape Infrastructure Department will ensure that monitoring and oversight of the projects will be done in terms of the relevant sections of the Social Housing Act.

Asked about the housing backlog in the City, Simelane said 162,583 beneficiaries have been on the Housing Needs Register for at least five years while 120,838 had been on the database for 20 years and more.

She said it was impossible to provide a definitive timeframe for the complete eradication of the housing backlog because it is a moving target. 

“While housing opportunities are delivered annually, new households continue to form and additional residents continue to register their housing needs, resulting in ongoing growth in demand.

“Rather than predicting when the backlog will be fully eliminated, the City can more reliably forecast its future housing delivery potential based on factors such as the availability of suitably located land, the number of hectares that can be developed, anticipated residential yield, infrastructure capacity, and the financial resources required to support housing development."

The projections, said Simelane, would enable the City to estimate the number of housing opportunities that can be delivered over the medium to long term, as well as the associated land and capital investment requirements required to respond to both the existing housing backlog and future housing demand.

She said the City has identified stalled projects within both the social housing and Breaking New Ground (BNG) programmes.

“For social housing, the affected projects collectively comprise approximately 2,500 housing units. For the BNG programme, the Mahama Khayelitsha Project is currently stalled and comprises 261 top structures.”

The estimated development cost of the affected social housing projects is about R4 billion while the Mahama Khayelitsha Project would require the estimated budget of R45m for the construction of the 261 top structures.