--- title: "CT’s Tafelberg social housing units cut by Heritage assessment" description: "For years, Cape Town’s most celebrated promise on spatial justice has been that the old Tafelberg school site in Sea Point would finally deliver social and affordable housing at scale in a good city location. That promise now rests on a quiet decision that few people knew about until it had already been made." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "AFFORDABLE HOUSING OP-ED" author: "Zacharia Mashele, Buhle Booi and Zamindlela Mkhwanazi" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/zacharia-mashele-buhle-booi-and-zamindlela-mkhwanazi/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-11-01-cts-tafelberg-social-housing-units-cut-by-heritage-assessment/" published: "2026-11-01T15:03:28" updated: "2026-11-01T15:03:48" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 1450 --- # CT’s Tafelberg social housing units cut by Heritage assessment > For years, Cape Town’s most celebrated promise on spatial justice has been that the old Tafelberg school site in Sea Point would finally deliver social and affordable housing at scale in a good city location. That promise now rests on a quiet decision that few people knew about until it had already been made. By Zacharia Mashele, Buhle Booi and Zamindlela Mkhwanazi · Published 1 November 2026, 17:03 SAST · Updated 1 November 2026, 17:03 SAST ## Key points - A height reduction at Cape Town’s Tafelberg site has cut the proposed social housing yield by up to 52 units. - The 11-storey market-rate building was lowered to eight storeys after limited public and heritage objections, despite assessments finding its visual impact acceptable. - Because market-rate homes cross-subsidise social housing, the change threatens the project’s financial feasibility and undermines spatial justice. - Housing advocates want the province to withdraw its current application and restore the larger development, with additional visual-impact mitigation. ## Content ![Signpost-Op-Ed](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/gNZKiZPF4-YQh91yyhtjMukrWaY=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/label-Op-Ed.jpg) The Western Cape Government has been running a two-year “packaging process” on the old Tafelberg school site in Sea Point. It includes feasibility studies on the site, looking at the viability of social, affordable and market-rate housing development, and going through the required heritage and land use application processes to prepare the site for release to a developer. ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/jwsZW8QjLblovSHsa0Y2gpGLJZ8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/TafelbergSchool_670890.jpg) The province’s preferred and viable development concept for the site, known as Option 3D and publicised in October 2025, proposed an 11-storey open-market building facing Main Road, with retail on the ground floor. Behind it would sit two four-storey walk-up social housing blocks around shared courtyards. ### **Project’s ‘financial engine’** The open-market building is not an afterthought. It is the financial engine of the project, because revenue from market-rate units is required to cross-subsidise the social housing in the context of the current social housing funding crisis, where little to no social housing funding is available from the national government. The project’s own report said Option 3D was recognised by all stakeholders as the option that maximised the site’s potential and provided the largest number of social housing units. Option 3D was the basis for the draft Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) report that was open for public participation between November and December 2025. However, in the finalised HIA report submitted to Heritage Western Cape (HWC) in February 2026 for approval, the 11-storey building was reduced to [eight storeys](https://groundup.org.za/article/government-sent-back-to-the-drawing-board-over-tafelberg-site-dispute/). This meant less housing units across the board: 220 open-market units (down from 229 – a reduction of nine) and 220 social housing units (down from 252 – a reduction of 32), with a capped minimum of 200 social units, which is the mostly likely given the current social housing funding crisis – so a reduction of 52 units. That is 52 households denied the possibility of living in a well-located and amenity-rich area they would otherwise not be able to afford, due to the ongoing effects of spatial apartheid. The project team concedes the cost. In its own words, the lowered height is a direct response to negative comments during the public participation process, even though it affects financial feasibility, cross-subsidisation and delivery of social housing. So the question is: what justified giving up the very thing that makes more social housing possible? ![Disputes Continue Over Tafelberg Remedial School Site In Sea Point](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/_vJKXl6DBMoaWkF3FluenioluBA=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/oped-booi-heritage2_129128.jpg) *The former Tafelberg School in Sea Point, Cape Town. (Photo: Gallo Images/ER Lombard)* ### **Comments on height** The public comments on height were not overwhelming. Of 44 comments received, 22 mentioned height. Only 10 came from immediate neighbours or affected parties, about 23% of the comments on the subject. The Sea Point, Fresnaye and Bantry Bay Ratepayers & Residents Association, the area’s official ratepayer body, made no comment on height at all. Only the City’s Environmental and Heritage Resources Management (EHRM) branch had an issue with the height, although their comments were inconsistent with both the Visual Impact Assessment (VIA) analysis and recommendations in the draft HIA. The professional assessment of Concept 3D in the draft HIA did not support the reduction. The VIA found the 11-storey building consistent with the dense “urban wall” character of Main Road and subordinate to the taller buildings along the beachfront. It found the visual impacts acceptable with mitigation. The revised visual assessment for the lowered building concept in the finalised HIA tells a different story in tone, but not in substance. The impact on The Glen, the low-rise residential street that neighbours raised most sharply, is unchanged and still rated as high. That impact comes from the four-storey social housing blocks, not the Main Road building. The loss of the view corridor towards Lion’s Head remains, only slightly reduced. Most recently completed, under-construction and approved buildings along this stretch of Main Road are already between nine and 11 storeys. They already block that view and set a taller building precedent for the corridor. In other words, the City, the Province and the project team have traded away homes for a visual improvement that barely exists. ### **The Constitutional Court** On 2 July 2026, the Constitutional Court held that the province and the City had failed to meet their constitutional obligations to provide social and affordable housing in well-located parts of Cape Town, and that their approach entrenched spatial inequality. The duty to provide access to housing, the Court said, is a duty to dismantle patterns of exclusion. The province must do everything in its power to maximise social housing on this site. The province and the City’s constitutional and legal obligations and policy commitments with regard to spatial justice are clear, as declared by the Constitutional Court. ### **A process hard to follow** The way this change reached the public is also troubling. On 27 February 2026, registered interested and affected parties were informed that the final HIA had been submitted to Heritage Western Cape. Neither the email nor the webpage mentioned that the preferred option had changed. The revised, lower-height proposal appeared only in a separate Supplementary Report, dated a day earlier, placed among many other links. Ndifuna Ukwazi learned of the change from a [GroundUp article](https://groundup.org.za/article/government-sent-back-to-the-drawing-board-over-tafelberg-site-dispute/) after the heritage meeting at which it was considered. People cannot meaningfully participate in a process whose most important change is not disclosed to them. ![Disputes Continue Over Tafelberg Remedial School Site In Sea Point](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/rTEZodQuY5RddkEGSdvbmdObz5g=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/oped-booi-heritage1_571093.jpg) *The former Tafelberg School site in Sea Point report includes an 11-storey open-market building facing Main Road, with retail on the ground floor. (Photo: Gallo Images/ER Lombard)* [Read more The truth of spatial apartheid — ConCourt delivers a history lesson to DA July 2, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/CNMxPHuYVJzOyoHO2yskpHtKwjM=/450x0/smart/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/953511bb-720f-4719-91f5-0f0385041d64.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-07-02-the-truth-of-spatial-apartheid-concourt-delivers-a-history-lesson-to-da/) ### **What’s at stake** Cross-subsidisation is not a technicality. It is how the state can enable social housing on public land together with social housing developers. Every storey removed from the market-rate building reduces the revenue that supports the social housing blocks. At a time when thousands of Capetonians are on waiting lists and the legacy of spatial apartheid still shapes where people can live, we cannot afford to treat a viable, well-located public site as an opportunity to appease a small number of objectors or the City Heritage branch’s subjective and outdated views. Heritage matters, and so does community input. But heritage protection cannot become a tool for shrinking the number of poor and working-class people who are allowed to live in a neighbourhood. The City’s heritage branch is a commenting body, not a decision-maker in this instance, and its own comment on height rested on outdated context and subjective judgments that the professional visual assessments did not support. Even one HWC committee member, at the meeting to decide on the HIA – after we pointed out the effects of the height reduction – said that this was an unfair trade-off between visual impact and the spatial justice of 52 more households being able to live in an area they would otherwise not be able to afford. They stated that HWC would not want to impose any specific limit on the height of the building, and the rest of the committee agreed. In terms of the relevant legal and policy framework, the City’s heritage branch failed to take into account the spatial justice implications of its comments in calling for a reduction in height of the 11-storey building to eight storeys. It would have known that this height reduction would have an impact on the financial feasibility, cross-subsidisation and delivery of social housing on the Tafelberg site. The province should have pushed back against the heritage branch’s visual impact concerns in the interests of spatial justice, and come to an agreement on additional visual impact mitigation measures. Or the province could have waited for HWC to decide on the Option 3D in a finalised HIA application and then appealed if the HWC chose to limit the height, which it anyway didn’t do. [Read more Right of reply: Cape Town’s affordable housing progress is undeniable July 5, 2026 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/authors/1535352089385316383.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-07-05-right-of-reply-cape-towns-affordable-housing-progress-is-undeniable/) ### **What should happen now** The Western Cape Department of Infrastructure should do three things: 1. Withdraw the current land use application 2. Submit a new HIA application for approval based on Option 3D (i.e. finalise the previous draft HIA retaining this option, with additional visual impact mitigation measures. No further public participation is required. 3. Based on HWC approval, submit a revised land use application based on Option 3D. Tafelberg is meant to show that Cape Town can build an inclusive city, not just talk about one. We should not lose that chance. **DM** *Zacharia Mashele is a communications and multimedia professional with experience in strategic communications, digital marketing, media relations and visual storytelling.* *Buhle Booi is the Head of Political Organising and Campaigns at Ndifuna Ukwazi, an NGO that works to broaden access to well-located land and affordable housing.* *Zamindlela Mkhwanazi is a researcher whose work focuses on transformation and building sustainable communities.*