THE City has come under fire for its plans to sell more prime land in the CBD to the highest bidder, while doing nothing to prioritise affordable housing for the poor near the centre of the city.
Ndifuna Ukwazi – an activist organisation and law centre that promotes constitutional rights and social justice – slated the City yesterday for disposing six sites which could have been used for affordable housing.
A 3 932m2 Foreshore power station site in Lower Long Street is intended to be auctioned next month.
This follows an R80 million land sale in May to the Southern Sun Hotel.
But Ndifuna Ukwazi researcher Julian Sendin said the City had allegedly done nothing to prioritise affordable housing in the CBD.
Sendin said a cursory investigation disclosed that in 2014/15 the City disposed of two other sites on the Foreshore; erf 1056 next to the stadium in Green Point; land in Maiden’s Cove in Clifton; Strand Street Quarry in Bo-Kaap; and a site in Century City.
“Add to this the four sites that provincial government recently intended to release to the open market: Tafelberg in Sea Point, Helen Bowden Nurses Home in Green Point, the Alfred Street Complex and Top Yard in the CBD – as well as the cumulative impact of other properties which have been disposed of in the years since democratic rule and an alarming trend reveals itself.
“This cannot continue without intervention.
“Their increasing influence in the shaping of our city is a major cause for concern,” Sendin said.
Cape Town deputy mayor Ian Neilson said council approved that land along Lower Long Street be sold and it went on auction last year, but the City did not get the price it wanted.
Neilson could not recall yesterday how much money the City wanted for the land.
He acknowledged the need for housing, but said it made economical sense to sell land in the City to private entities, and then use the money to address a range of needs, as housing was not the only need. He said other locations could be considered for affordable housing.
“The City is very much for the provision of housing, and it is a trend to sell high-value land to the private sector as it provides jobs and greater opportunities for people.
“There is a vague idea that low-cost housing will work in the city, but the economic fact is that it is expensive to construct and maintain,” Neilson said.
He used an example of a 16m2 apartment in St George’s Mall costing R5 000 a month to reference the cost of living in the CBD.
The City planned to sell more land in the CBD to private buyers later this year, Neilson said.
Ndifuna Ukwazi welcomed a move last month by the provincial government for financial modelling to test the viability of social housing on the Tafelberg School property in Sea Point.
The sale of the site to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School for R135m was stopped after an agreement with the provincial government following a high court order in April.
Reclaim the City and its supporters protested that the land be used for affordable housing.
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille’s spokesperson, Zara Nicholson, was asked why the sale of land was not used to redress apartheid’s legacy.
Nicholson said: “We support the deputy mayor’s comments.”
Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance chairperson Philip Bam said land in the city did not have to be expensive.
“As long as apartheid’s spatial legacy continues, people will continue to live far from the city and be excluded,” Bam said.
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