Cape Town - The City said it had spent nearly all the funding for the financial year that had been earmarked for human settlement projects.
It had spent 95% of its Urban Settlements Development Grant (USDG) in the 2020/21 financial year, and 99% was spent in the Informal Settlements Upgrading Partnership Grant (ISUPG).
USDG, one of the largest transfers from the National Treasury, is primarily oriented towards services such as housing, informal settlements and basic services.
Mayco member for Human Settlements, Malusi Booi, said: “The grant funding spend is a good reflection of the City’s human settlements delivery over time, and is a more reliable indicator than housing numbers delivered in a particular year.
“This is because completed housing unit numbers and grant funding spend don’t necessarily correlate in a given year, as the majority of budget for a project is potentially spent in a different year to when units are completed.
“Any money not spent largely due to volatility, vandalism or violence in some areas is not lost. Committed funds are used as roll-over funds.”
There are over 6 500 social housing units in the pipeline, including 2 000 in Central Cape Town and 2 500 nearing completion, or about to begin construction, along the Voortrekker corridor.
Between the current 2021/22 and 2023/24 financial years, the allocated capital budget for City human settlements projects is approximately R3.3 billion.
Of this, nearly R2bn is to be spent on formal subsidy housing and R1.3bn on informal housing and new accommodation types.
“The total capital grant funding for human settlements projects over the next three years will never be enough to address the need for affordable housing,” said Booi.
Development Action Group researchers Querida Saal and Willard Matiashe said the City owned well-located and underutilised land parcels and vacant buildings with the potential for redevelopment in such a way that it would accommodate different income and tenure mixes, however there seemed to be a general lack of political will or commitment to do so.
“Given the desperate need for housing, spending state resources on their intended purposes is crucial. For instance, earlier this year the Western Cape provincial government reported that the Human Settlements Department spent R53.8m of its USDG funding on security over four months, acknowledging that 350 homes could have been built with these funds.”