Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has won its appeal against a high court order to provide emergency housing to Bromwell Street, Woodstock, residents close to their current residences, but the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) said the City must provide it as near as possible to where they currently reside.
The order is also only for those currently residing there and their eviction has been postponed until end of June. The City has been ordered to provide the emergency housing before May 30.
In a judgment handed down yesterday after protracted litigation, the SCA upheld the City’s appeal of the high court order, with no order as to costs, and further set aside the high court’s order.
The SCA also extended the date on which the occupants were required to vacate the property to June 30.
The City appealed a judgment that was made in September last year by the Western Cape High Court which ruled its emergency housing programme and implementation unconstitutional and ordered it to make available temporary housing to the 26 applicants in an area close to where they are currently residing.
The court gave the City 12 months to effect this.
Central to the City’s appeal was whether the constitutional obligation extended to making temporary emergency accommodation available at a specific location.
The high court had made an order, among others, compelling the City to provide the occupants and their dependants with temporary emergency accommodation or transitional housing in Woodstock, Salt River, or in the inner city.
The Bromwell Street residents were served with an eviction order in 2016 by the Woodstock Hub after it bought properties on 120-128 Bromwell Street which would potentially displace more than 20 families.
The occupants, some of them born there, had rented the units in the property for amounts ranging from R300 to R2 000 a month.
Since the Woodstock Hub launched five separate eviction applications in 2015, more than 10 families had been evicted, with most scattered around the Cape Flats and others moving into the old Woodstock Hospital, now known as Cissie Gool House.
Regarding the reasonableness of the City’s emergency housing programme, the SCA found that the City demonstrated unequivocally that its policy provided for an emergency housing programme, and the fact that no provision was made for such in the inner city did not render the choices made by the City irrational or unreasonable.
In respect of the issue of unconstitutionality, the SCA found that the high court had not identified the extent of invalidity for the City to rectify in its order, and for this it said the order of unconstitutionality could not stand.
It further found that the high court order put the City in an invidious position by making an order without being in a position to know if the land would be found, specifically in the inner city or surrounds.
Passing the judgment, Judge Nolwazi Mabindla-Boqwana said while a case was not made out for the declaration of unconstitutionality of the City’s housing programme and its implementation as sought by the residents, and for the provision of temporary emergency housing at a specific locality, the court had to make a just and equitable order so as not to render the occupants homeless.
Mabindla-Boqwana said the City bears a duty to provide the families with suitable temporary emergency accommodation.
She said the City should take into account the residents’ places of employment and children’s schooling, hospitals, transportation and other important amenities that their relocation may require.
The Ndifuna Ukwazi attorney who represented the residents, Disha Govender, said: “We have received the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal today. We will be discussing the judgment with our clients and considering the way forward. We will be in a better position to comment further once we have done this.”
The City said it would now determine the number of occupants remaining at Bromwell Street, including their socio-economic conditions, before further engagements on alternative emergency accommodation.