{"id":232752,"date":"2022-07-29T14:16:32","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T12:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/city-of-cape-town-tables-release-of-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects\/"},"modified":"2022-07-29T14:16:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T12:16:32","slug":"cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape Town tables plan for two inner-city social housing projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/20170914_Affordable_Housing\/Affordable_Housing-6384HR_10SaltRiverMarket.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The site at the Salt River Market will provide 216 social housing units. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The City of Cape Town has released two parcels of land for major social housing projects near the city centre.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">There are now 800 central Cape Town social housing units in or near the construction phase.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The release of land has been hailed as a victory for land and housing activists.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The City of Cape Town has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.capetown.gov.za\/Media-and-news\/Historic%20Salt%20River%20Market%20set%20for%20social%20housing%20construction\">tabled the release<\/a> of land for two major social housing projects \u2014 the development and construction of the Salt River Market precinct, and the release of the remainder of the Pickwick Road site \u2014 for social housing.<\/p>\n<p>In council on Thursday, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced that the Salt River site will deliver 216 social housing units in a nine-storey mixed-use development. The Pickwick Road site in Salt River is to offer 600 social housing units in an eight-storey development.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement has been lauded as a victory for land and housing activists who for years have been calling for the City to speed up developments of affordable housing in well-located areas.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Ndifuna Ukwazi, a land and housing organisation, said the release of the sites was a \u201cwelcoming step towards seeing affordable housing on the site\u201d. However, they noted that the progress on these affordable housing projects <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/cape-town-housing-activists-grow-impatient-long-wait-promised-social-housing\/\">has been very slow<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2017, the City announced that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/photos-cape-towns-affordable-housing-sites\/\">11 pieces of public land<\/a> in the city centre, Woodstock and Salt River would be used to develop social and transitional housing. These are located in Pine Road, New Market Street, Fruit and Veg Drury Street, Upper Canterbury Street, Woodstock Hospital, Woodstock Hospital Park, James Street, Dillon Lane, Salt River Market, Pickwick Road Transitional and Pickwick Road.<\/p>\n<p>Five years on, only part of the Pickwick Road transitional site has been completed and no construction work has started at the other sites.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday\u2019s announcement could signal a change of pace for the City. Hill-Lewis said that \u201cOur Land Release Programme is gaining momentum. Our goal is a more rapid pipeline for social housing and mixed-use private sector development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hill-Lewis said that in the last three months, three properties, which include the ones in Salt River and Pickwick Road, with over 1,000 social housing units were presented to the city council.<\/p>\n<p>He said they are \u201cadvancing an advocacy agenda\u201d for the national government to release the large pieces of unused state land in the city, which he claims are \u201cat least 77 times the size of the land the city owns\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Malusi Booi, said the release of Salt River Market means the City now has over 800 central Cape Town social housing units in or near the construction phase via social housing partners, and 6,500 social housing units in the pipeline across 50 land parcels across the city.<\/p>\n<p>According to the City\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/resource.capetown.gov.za\/documentcentre\/Documents\/City%20strategies%2c%20plans%20and%20frameworks\/CT_Metropolitan_Spatial_Development_Framework.pdf\"> Municipal Spatial Development Framework<\/a>, \u201c35,000 housing opportunities must be supplied each year, over 20 years, to meet the current backlog\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The other projects are Maitland (\u00b1 200 social housing units), two projects in Woodstock, Pine Road (\u00b1 240 social housing units) and Dillon Lane (\u00b1150 social housing units). Inner city projects in the land-use management phase include Newmarket Street (\u00b1200 social housing units) and Woodstock Hospital precinct, where Booi claims that around 700 social housing units have been delayed due to \u201cthe orchestrated building hijackings of March 2017\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The old Woodstock Hospital is the site of an occupation known as Cissie Gool House by members of Reclaim the City and supported by Ndifuna Ukwazi.<\/p>\n<p>Its occupiers are families that had been forced out of their homes in Salt River and Woodstock by gentrification and have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/housing-activists-look-beyond-city\/\">persistently advocated for affordable or social housing projects<\/a> in and around the City centre. At the time of the occupation, no such housing had been built or was planned by the City.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe struggle to release the Salt River Market for affordable housing dates back to as early as 2008 \u2026 These protracted delays need to be addressed systematically and accounted for,\u201d said Ndifuna Ukwazi in their statement on the release of land.<\/p>\n<p>Zackie Achmat, a founder of Ndifuna Ukwazi, told GroundUp that the mayor\u2019s commitment to the Salt River and Pickwick sites was a victory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe road to spatial justice was opened by many comrades and commenced in the CBD with our struggle to ensure that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/tafelberg-four-years-battle\/\">Tafelberg site<\/a> becomes a space for social housing. We remember that the mayor also promised housing on the Rondebosch Golf Course and hold him to that promise as a priority,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Achmat urged Hill-Lewis to formally recognise the occupations at Cissie Gool House and at the old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/room-view-occupiers-explain-why-they-have-moved-waterfront-property\/\">Helen Bowden Nurses\u2019 Home<\/a> (known to its occupiers as Ahmed Kathrada House) and to assist in transforming them into cooperative rental housing.<\/p>\n<p>Ndifuna Ukwazi researcher Robyn Park-Ross said that the land release is an essential step but cautioned that other sites that were approved for release in October 2019 at Pine Road and Dillon Lane have not been developed almost three years later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese examples warn us that it may still be many years before we see homes on the Salt River Market site. The proof that there is political will to develop these sites will be in seeing people live in affordable homes on the sites,\u201d said Park-Ross.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The site at the Salt River Market will provide 216 social housing units. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks The City of Cape Town has released two parcels of land for major social housing projects near the city centre. There are now 800 central Cape Town social housing units in or near the construction phase. The release [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-232752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/cape-town-tables-plan-for-two-inner-city-social-housing-projects.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}