City accused of politicising affordable housing

The City has defended itself against sharp criticism that it merely announces properties for development without having anything to show for it, with the Good Party’s Brett Herron saying they announced the redevelopment of the “Fruit & Veg” site in the CBD three times.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, in a Council speech last month, touted the City’s commitment to addressing apartheid spatial planning, explaining how developers bidding on the properties have to meet a minimum threshold of social housing units as part of their mixed-use development.

“And if they were to fail to meet this threshold for whatever reason, our reversionary clause would kick in and the property would revert to the City. Let me remind you here that when we speak of social housing, we are talking about subsidised, affordable rental units aimed at families with a monthly household income of under R22 000 a month.”

He said that the City has a social housing pipeline of 12 000 units, 4000 of which are in inner city areas such as Woodstock, Salt River and Maitland, but their big news “is that we will vote to approve the final release to the developer of one of the best-located and most exciting sites in our whole social housing pipeline”.

“We call it the Fruit & Veg site, because it’s the location of the existing Food Lover’s Market store – formerly known as Fruit & Veg – which is made up of two erven that lie between Kent and Bloemhof Streets, right on the edge of District Six and the CBD.

“The property is close to schools, it is mere blocks away from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and you have the entire city centre with all its economic opportunities right on your doorstep. This is the kind of address that can change people’s lives and open up entire new avenues of opportunity for them,” Hill-Lewis said.

However, GOOD Party secretary-general and former Mayco member for the transport and urban development authority, Brett Herron, has called out the City for announcing the same property thrice.

“On August 21, the Mayor of Cape Town announced redevelopment of the 'Fruit & Veg' site in Roeland Street. It was previously announced in Sept 2017, cancelled in August 2019, and relaunched with a sod-turning in February 2022. It’s been announced three times since 2017,” he posted on social media over the weekend.

Herron yesterday accused Hill-Lewis of playing “a very crude and cruel political game with the issue of affordable housing and housing desperation”.

“It is time for all of us to hold them accountable for failing to implement these projects and for the dishonesty in re-announcing the same public land for release for housing purposes. I can name at least 20 sites that have been identified and announced in the inner city since at least as far back as 2008. Not one of them has been developed,” Herron said.

“The media houses have all covered these announcements extensively, and the DA's failure to deliver, and their rehashing old announcements sometimes with new names, should be subject to the same level of scrutiny that an ANC government would receive.

“The current track record of the DA-governed City and Province is zero inner-city affordable housing despite the DA being in government in the City for 19 years and in the province for 16 years. That track record is as bad as any other government in South Africa - national, provincial or local - where promises are empty and people suffer unbearably waiting for dignified housing,” Herron said.

In response, City’s spokesperson, Luthando Tyhalibongo, defended the City, saying that the site has reached the stage of final Council approval for land release.

“By law, sites must undergo several statutory phases and public participations before final release. Sites therefore feature several times on Council's agenda for approvals at each stage.

“It must be noted that more land has been released during this term than in the 10 years prior, as part of the City's accelerated land release for the affordable housing priority programme,” Tyhalibongo said.

Ndifuna Ukwazi’s spokesperson, Yusrah Bardien, added that they welcome the long-awaited release of the Fruit and Veg site as its release is a critical, “albeit delayed, step towards addressing the housing crisis”.

“However, this progress is profoundly undermined by the decision to widen the income bracket for affordable housing, which has now breached the R30 000 mark.

“We are concerned this policy shift means the resulting units will primarily cater to the upper end of the market, effectively excluding over 75% of Cape Town’s households - those who earn less than R22,000 per month,” Bardien said.

“This raises a crucial question: for whom is this ‘affordable housing’ truly built, and who is it leaving behind?”

Cape Times