Mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis says the City will release its New Market Street property for social housing development following CoCT council approval yesterday.
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The mayor explained that the 10 300 square meter property was on the verge of Cape Town’s CBD in Woodstock and would provide some 200 social housing units and in excess of 300 gap and market-related houses.
According to Hill-Lewis, the metro was also applying guidelines to stimulate social housing outputs on the properties it releases.
‘New Market Street is close to all the amenities one could possibly hope for in central Cape Town,’ he said. ‘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 that the future of affordable housing was reliant on private sector delivery, enabled by the state playing a role through subsidies, bulk services, and discounted land for viable affordable housing development.
He added that properties reaching critical land release milestones, under the mayoral priority programme for affordable housing land release, also included 215 social housing units in Salt River Market, Woodstock and 600 in Pickwick, 150 units in Roeland Street and 160 units on Earl Street.
The New Market Street is one of nearly a dozen sites in the inner city that were identified to be set aside for affordable and social housing initiatives in 2017.
At the time, CoCT stated that it aimed to address the housing need and reverse apartheid spatial planning by bringing working-class people closer to the inner city.
However, the City made a U-turn in August 2019 and canceled five projects that included affordable housing in Salt River and Woodstock.
The Woodstock Hospital site, Woodstock Hospital Park, Pickwick Street, and the Roeland Street property where Fruit Lover’s Market is located were the five projects that were canceled.
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.’
The City’s Brackenfell, Strand, and Kraaifontein Walk-In Centers will also be closed on Saturday, 27 May, so that the offices can install backup power supplies.
In a notice, the City stated that it was putting in place photovoltaic (PV) solar installations, inverters, and generators at various City facilities to make sure that offices remained operational and services continued during load-shedding.
In addition, the notice stated that residents could pay their municipal accounts at any Shoprite/Checkers, Pick n Pay, PEP, Woolworths, USave, Ackermans, Lewis, Top It Up, and selected Spar stores in addition to the Kuils River Municipal office on Saturday.
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Geordin Hill-Lewis: A bright future lies ahead for Cape Town
Picture: Monique de Beer Photography