Cape Town - Housing advocacy groups have welcomed the release of the Salt River Market precinct for development and construction of social housing as a step forward in addressing the crisis.
The City tabled the release of the Salt River Market precinct for development and construction of social housing, as well as the release of a second and even larger site at Pickwick Road on Thursday.
The Salt River site will deliver over 200 social housing units within a mixed-use development. The Pickwick Road site will deliver a 600-social housing unit development.
The release of the developments form part of the City’s commitment “to faster release of well-located city-owned land to deliver more affordable housing for Capetonians”.
Woodstock Residents Association chairperson Andrea Couvert said: “We are in favour of creating social housing projects, although we have some critical considerations about the size of some of the projects. We are happy that the City has taken a step forward in the Salt River Market and Pickwick Road projects, we hope that the City will also proceed on the Cissie Gool House development where, as association, we are committed to supporting residents in an interesting and innovative co-design project.”
Housing advocacy organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi added that they hoped to see the same effort going into completing other delayed projects.
“It has been five years since 11 pieces of public land in Woodstock, Salt River and the inner city were earmarked for affordable housing and social housing, only today the Salt River Market site was released to a social housing company and the Pickwick Site land was released. This is a welcome step towards seeing affordable housing on the site and we do applaud the Mayor for fast-tracking this process. The struggle to release the Salt River Market for affordable housing dates back to as early as 2008. Fourteen years have passed since then; the entire lifespan of someone in Grade 9. While people die, waiting patiently, on the housing waiting list, can the City really afford to take this long just to release land? These protracted delays need to be addressed systematically and accounted for,” they said.
According to Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, the future of social housing looked very different.
“Our goal is a more rapid pipeline for social housing and mixed-use private sector development. We know that fully government subsidised housing programmes in South Africa are undergoing a permanent tapering of budgets and delivery. The future of affordable housing delivery is not going to be in the free housing space, and is not going to be delivered by the state. If we intend to make any meaningful dent on the demand for housing in our cities, then it will be through unlocking micro-developers, social housing companies, and private sector delivery,” he said.
Cape Times