With a small group of donors, I have been accommodating those that the City has this past week, – during the most challenging weather conditions imaginable – been illegally evicting and displacing, without court orders or offers of alternative accommodation.
These “evictions” occurred in areas such as Woodstock, Salt River, Observatory, and Kensington.
We accommodated these individuals in seven dignified accommodation venues across the city, where they will be able to restart their lives and be self-sustainable by their second month of accommodation.
This is a rapid re-homing intervention called restart which we commenced in December, 2023 and which has thus far successfully accommodated 130 individuals who are today all self sustainable.
To achieve this, we assist those that are elderly or disabled to register for their grants, assist single mothers with employment at our Trash to Treasures stalls, and we support those who have employed themselves in the recycling and security industries by negotiating that their rentals are payable either daily, weekly or monthly.
We also provide them with access to harm-reduction therapy and psychosocial support.
The following question was subsequently posed to me:
“Is there a reason you don’t direct those individuals to the City’s safe spaces where they can get a bed and a hot meal? I appreciate your efforts, but based on your posts you seem to oppose everything the City attempts to do. I don’t oppose everything the City does.”
And I thought the question important enough to respond to it in the form of my column this week.
Unfortunately, the City has been getting away with misinforming the public about what a safe space offers its residents and I thus understand this question having been posed.
So let’s clear up all these misconceptions people have of the City’s safe spaces.
These safe spaces are full virtually every single day and have no capacity for the numbers we are accommodating.
As an example, let’s consider how the City is making space available at their Culemborg safe space one in order to accommodate the 124 people that they sought a court order to evict from seven hotspots in the city.
The court granted the City their eviction order but did so conditional to certain specifications. The judge also said he would oversee both the eviction and the accommodating of these individuals.
Contrary to the City’s testimony in court, the Culemborg safe space one does not have the capacity to accommodate these 124 people being evicted and so to seem compliant, the City ordered their service provider to issue the women at that safe space with notices that they have to either accept being sent to the Bellville safe space or be evicted back onto the streets.
Most of the individuals we have assisted and are assisting off the streets are:
• The elderly.
• The disabled.
• Abused mothers with children.
The fact that safe spaces expect people to be out of the safe spaces for 12 hours of the day each day, means that they are not conducive to accommodating the elderly, the disabled or mothers with young children.
It also disqualifies the guys that have uplifted themselves and are self-employed in sectors such as recycling and security where they at times work through the night and need to sleep during the day.
Safe spaces offer either “sleeping on a bunk bed in a large prison-style dormitory” or “sleeping outside in the elements under a corrugated metal sheet roof on wooden pallets” options of accommodation.
The residents are expected to use the bucket system to wash themselves.
No consideration or significance is attached to an individual’s privacy and they are given no agency over their own lives and futures.
There is no empowerment at safe spaces, no harm-reduction therapy offered and adults are treated like erring children who need to be policed at all times.
On the other hand, the places we have been accommodating people living on the streets at, all offer dignified and private accommodation. There are lockable rooms which accommodate two individuals and rooms that accommodate families. They share kitchen and ablution facilities.
Residents can come and go as they please. They are adults and they are treated as such.
Our mission is to accommodate those living on the streets in dignified and sustainable accommodation options where they are able to leave homelessness behind, as I did, rather than accommodating them in spaces where they are never allowed to forget that they are still homeless as they are forced back onto the streets every single morning.
And then they have to renegotiate their place every single night hoping to find a bed available and not be forced to leave should the City need space to be compliant with the next court order.
Those are the reasons why we don’t refer these individuals back to the system that evicted them in the first place.
* Carlos Mesquita is an activist for the homeless and a researcher working in the Western Cape Legislature for the GOOD Party.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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