Cape Town - Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says the City will release its New Market Street property for social housing development following City council approval yesterday.
Hill-Lewis said the 10 300 square metre property on the verge of Cape Town’s CBD in Woodstock would yield 200 social housing units and over 300 gap and market related houses.
He said the City was also adopting guidelines to maximise social housing outputs on the properties it releases.
Hill-Lewis said: “New Market Street is close to all the amenities one could possibly hope for in central Cape Town. While the original feasibility study foresaw 165 social units in a mixed-use development, we have rezoned the property to maximise its development capacity, allowing us to increase the social housing yield to 200 units.
“We pledged faster land release for more affordable housing, and in the year this priority project has been running, we have delivered five inner-city land parcels totalling over 1 300 social housing units through this council.”
Hill-Lewis said the future of affordable housing was all about private sector delivery, with the state playing an enabling role through subsidies, bulk services, and discounted land for viable affordable housing development.
He said properties reaching critical land release milestones under the mayoral priority programme for affordable housing land release also include 215 social housing units in Salt River Market, Woodstock and 600 in Pickwick, also in Woodstock.
The release also includes 150 units in in Roeland Street and 160 units on Earl Street, Woodstock.
The New Market Street site was one of 11 in the inner city identified by the City back in 2017, to be set aside for affordable and social housing initiatives.
At the time, the City said it hoped to address the housing need and reverse apartheid spatial planning by bringing working-class people closer to the inner city.
However, in August 2019, the City did an about-turn and cancelled five projects that included affordable housing in Woodstock and Salt River.
The five cancelled projects were New Market Street, the Woodstock Hospital site, Woodstock Hospital Park, Pickwick Street, and the plot where Fruit Lover’s Market is in Roeland Street.
In 2021, then Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille said the 2017 plan had been “an unprecedented attempt to mitigate rising unaffordability of accommodation in the inner city, and gentrification.”
Meanwhile, the City’s Brackenfell, Strand and Kraaifontein Walk-In Centres will be closed on Saturday, May 27 for the installation of back-up power supplies at the offices.
In a notice the City said it was installing generators, inverters and photovoltaic (PV) solar installations at various City facilities to ensure offices remain unaffected and services continue during load-shedding.
The notice advised residents to visit the Kuils River Municipal office as an alternative on Saturday and said municipal accounts could also be paid at any Shoprite/Checkers, Pick n Pay, PEP, Woolworths, USave, Ackermans, Lewis, Top It Up and selected Spar shops.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za