Right of reply: Cape Town’s affordable housing progress is undeniable

Kevin Bloom’s take on the judgment in the Tafelberg school sale brushes past two essential facts in reaching the false conclusion that “the Constitutional Court found… that the Hill-Lewis-led City of Cape Town, aided and abetted by the Western Cape provincial government, had indeed been perpetuating the legacy of spatial apartheid”.

The facts are clear, undisputed, and easy to find for any journalist, if they are committed to truthful reporting:

• First, the old Tafelberg school sale was more than a decade ago, and was sold by a completely separate sphere of government. So, the reference to the City, or indeed the Geordin Hill-Lewis administration, is just wrong. The property is neither a City-owned property, nor was it sold by the City. It’s worth noting too that the Western Cape government has since announced plans to develop affordable housing at this site; and
• Second, the court absolutely did not rule on current efforts by the province and City to address the legacy of spatial apartheid, expressly acknowledging that the case record is many years out of date, and that fresh reports need to be filed by the province and City on affordable housing progress and challenges.

This distortion and omission of essential context means that Bloom’s conclusion falls well short of fair and accurate analysis. This is what happens when ideology overtakes journalistic integrity.

Cape Town has made considerable progress in affordable housing, especially in this term of office, with more City-owned land being released for this purpose than in the 10 years prior to that combined.

About 4,000 affordable units are entering construction in Cape Town’s inner city, including at the Salt River Market, New Market Street (Foreshore), Pickwick (Salt River) and Fruit & Veg (CBD).

This is part of an overall 12,000-unit pipeline, and is aside from projects already completed and tenanted, including the inner city’s Maitland Mews (204 units), Goodwood Station (more than 1,000 units) and Bothasig Gardens (more than 400 units).

Uniquely in South Africa, the City has in recent years adopted public guidelines for selling land at below market value to maximise social housing yield.

Unfortunately, the national human settlements department gets off scot-free in this court case, even though their policies and lack of social housing grant funding is the number one obstacle to moving projects forward faster, and at greater scale.

There are even more seismic national government failures too, which those crusading against the province and City in the media (including Bloom) never seem to actually report on:

• The SABC building, the only other significant piece of unused/underutilised state land in Sea Point, was sold to the Housing Development Agency (HDA) for affordable housing five years ago. The HDA is the development arm of the national Department of Human Settlements. The site has a potential yield of 280 apartments. Since then, nothing has happened on that site whatsoever to progress the aims of more affordable housing in Sea Point;
• District Six is a 40-hectare gaping reminder of apartheid spatial planning right in the heart of the city. The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development has made painfully slow progress in restoring this land to its long-identified beneficiaries, many of whom are dying before they can see any progress on the land they were evicted from. The potential yield on this land is a massive 5,000 affordable housing units;
• The Transnet Culemborg site, right adjacent to the CBD, is 45 hectares, 455,000 square metres. It is derelict, unkempt, an eyesore and unused. For years Transnet has been promising to release this site for much-needed development in this most central of locations. But all we see happening on-site is more illegal occupation and crime; and
• It is also worth noting the Constitutional Court’s finding that spheres of government should consult one another on land release, and that this responsibility must now also apply to the national government’s various well-located mega-properties which could yield more than 100,000 affordable units on nationally owned land, including underused military bases and the parliamentary village.

None of this gets even a mention. In comparison, the Tafelberg site has a potential yield of just 250 dedicated social housing units, alongside roughly a similar number of market and intermediate affordable units.

Readers can make of that what they will.

The City actually looks forward to submitting the report on affordable housing progress to the court. It will be a comprehensive account of an administration working to meaningfully undo the spatial legacy of apartheid. To suggest otherwise is, once again, pure propaganda. DM