The City of Cape Town will add at least 330 more transitional shelter beds to “safe spaces” in the coming months to help more homeless off the streets in different parts of the metro.
Also read: High Court order has homeless occupants evicted from field in Durbanville
The City will soon file planning approval applications for two new dignified transitional shelter facilities, in Green Point and Durbanville.
The plan is to renovate two municipal-owned sites into safe spaces to expand dignified transitional shelter and help more people off the streets in Cape Town.
The facilities offer two meals per day, showers and sanitation, and access to a range of care interventions. This includes referrals for mental health care, addiction treatment, job placement, family reunification, and help getting ID books.
In total, there will be a 420-bed boost for Cape Town’s inner city, with around 120 shelter beds already added to the City’s Culemborg safe space in the east of the CBD during winter 2022.
In Durbanville, the City plans to include a 30-bed safe space in the new Durbanville Public Transport Interchange (PTI) development.
Both the Green Point and Durbanville proposals will now follow the full regulatory and planning process before being implemented, during which comments by affected parties will be called for and duly considered.
“We aim to create two new Safe Spaces within the coming months as part of our drive to help more people off the streets in Cape Town by expanding dignified transitional shelter,” said Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. “Over the last year, we have shifted the City’s policy to care interventions designed to help people off the streets on a sustainable basis.”
“This is on the clear understanding that our city’s public spaces serve important economic and community needs. No person has the right to reserve a public space as exclusively theirs, while indefinitely refusing all offers of shelter and social assistance. Accepting social assistance to leave the streets is the best choice for dignity, health, and well-being.”
The City has committed more than R142 million over a three-year period to expanding and operating safe spaces.
“A large number of Capetonians living in public spaces suffer from mental afflictions, addiction, depression, psychosis, trauma, or familial abuse. This situation was exacerbated by extended national Covid-19 lockdowns and the related economic impact. For this reason, Safe Spaces offer care interventions designed to reintegrate people into society and help them off the streets on a sustainable basis,’ said Councillor Patricia van der Ross, Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health,” added the mayor.
“While many people accept offers of help to get off the streets, sadly there are also many cases where those unlawfully occupying public spaces have consistently refused all offers of social assistance. In these instances, the City will acquire the necessary court order, and ensure that alternative accommodation at shelters or Safe Spaces has been offered, where this is just and equitable.”
This comes after the Western Cape High Court recently ordered the eviction of unlawful occupants of a public open space on Baxter Street in Durbanville, who have consistently refused offers of social support.
In a statement, the City said it would be approaching the courts for similar orders for hotspots around the City, including the CBD.
“These processes take time, as the City needs to establish the social circumstances and identities of those unlawfully occupying public spaces, and ensure there is a record of social assistance having been offered as a first resort,” read the statement.
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Pictures: Supplied/ CoCT