South Africa

CAPE TOWN CITY COUNCIL

Mayor announces development of over 760 affordable CBD homes

Mayor announces development of over 760 affordable CBD homes
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.(Photo: Leila Dougan)

Social housing was a hot-button issue at a Cape Town City Council meeting on Thursday, with DA Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announcing two inner-city properties set to deliver about 760 affordable housing units.

At a full council sitting on Thursday, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced that more than 760 social housing units near Cape Town’s city centre were to be developed. 

He asked the municipal council to approve the start of public participation in the city’s intention to release properties in Newmarket Street in Woodstock and Pickwick Street in Salt River for the development of social housing. 

The Newmarket Street project “is set to include around 365 mixed-market units and 165 social housing units,” said Hill-Lewis. 

“The second property on the agenda today is Pickwick, a major development, which should include some 600 social housing units,” he added.  

Together, the Newmarket Street and Pickwick projects are set to deliver more than 760 affordable homes in mixed-income developments, near the City Bowl. 

 

Addressing council members, Hill-Lewis said the city had more than 6,500 social housing units in the pipeline across 50 land packages. These include 2,000 social housing units in central Cape Town and a further 2,500 opportunities – “either in the construction phase or close to it” – along the Voortrekker Road Corridor.  

“Spades have been in the ground at Maitland for several months already, where 200 social housing units are under construction,” he said.  

“In Woodstock, building plans for the Pine Road development were submitted for approval on 20 May by the social housing developer Sohco.”  

The mayor said that if all goes according to plan, construction would start on this inner city social housing project within a few months, which should allow for tenanting by late 2023 or early 2024.  

Dillon Lane, also in Woodstock, is set to deliver about 150 social housing units. 

“I’m advised that it is possible to start construction within a year and that both the site development plan and building plan approvals can be completed within 2022. We will be pushing to get this done in the earliest time frame possible,” said Hill-Lewis.  

On the back of Hill-Lewis’ electoral pledge to accelerate land release for social housing and shorten City processes, the city is also advancing an advocacy agenda for the national government to release large pieces of unused state land in the city, which are at least 77 times the size of the land the city owns.

The Good party’s Brett Herron, who has often crossed swords with Hill-Lewis over affordable housing and spatial planning in the city, was “encouraged by the City of Cape Town’s about-turn on the development of affordable housing on well-located parcels of publicly owned land in the inner city”. 

“We welcome the development of public land for public good. We are pleased that the city has come to its senses by recognising the long-term value of developing mixed-use and mixed-income developments with a threshold of a minimum number of social housing units,” added Herron. DM

 

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  • Lesley Green says:

    A crucial turn in city governance that’s genuinely hopeful because it will ease pressure in so many other sectors. A city is only as fair and just and habitable as its decisions about how best we can all live together. Dialogue between housing activists and urban designers must be a priority in shaping built spaces around movement, safety, water, food and energy that so as to minimize costs to citizens, and maximise safety. That requires foregrounding the values of citizenship and the commons, so that flows of funds from living costs (rent, energy, water etc) are returned to society rather than designed around the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of cost. Let’s design kind city spaces that are ecologies of wellbeing, attentive to food growing, energy production, water saving, and safety for families and children

  • Roy Haines says:

    It is so refreshing to have a young mayor who is actually doing and achieving his goals. Well done Geordan !!

  • Fanie Rajesh Ngabiso says:

    u da man.

  • Elmarie Dennis says:

    Well done on being proactive

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