The City of Cape Town has approved the release of its sixth inner-city property for social housing development.
The latest development is set to yield 375 social housing units and more than 350 open-market residential units in Woodstock.
Also read: Blow for Woodstock social housing plans
The 9 000-square-metre New Market Street property is the latest of a series of land parcels that the City has released. In total, these land parcels will yield more than 4 900 affordable housing units, including 2 100 social housing units.
‘You may recall that the original feasibility study for this 9 000 square meter property envisaged 200 social housing units as part of a mixed-use development,’ Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said in a statement.
‘However, as we reach the final land release stage today, that number has risen to 375 social housing units, as part of our commitment to maximise yield working together with social housing developers.’
‘These units will be cross-subsidised by retail space and more than 350 open market residential units.’
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The New Market Street site, located approximately five minutes from the City Centre, is close to amenities and public transport.
‘In total, city-wide, we have over 6 500 social housing units at various stages of the planning pipeline across 50 well-located parcels of land. These units will be a real game changer for qualifying residents who earn less than R22 000 a month,’ says Carl Pophaim, the City’s Mayco member for human settlements.
Hill-Lewis estimates that around 100 000 social housing opportunities are possible via sites such as Wingfield, Youngsfield, Ysterplaat and the Parliamentary Village.
‘I hope that the national winds of change will blow in a fresh urgency to the release of some of the mega-properties owned by [the] national government throughout our metro.’
Land and housing activists welcomed the release of the New Market Street site.
‘Social housing is the only housing programme that has ‘location’ in its requirements and therefore creates well-located affordable housing, which will contribute to changing the enduring spatial apartheid patterns we currently face,’ Ndifuna Ukwazi, an activist organisation and law centre, told IOL.
‘The location of the New Market Street site is at the edge of Woodstock, and the inner city where no forms of affordable housing have been built in three decades of democracy. We welcome this development and the urgency with which the mayor is approaching the matter.’
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Picture: City of Cape Town
