Cape Town - A family is fighting over who gets to buy a rented house after the main tenant, the father, died.
The house in Grove Street, Kuilsriver, is occupied by Shireen Ross, who the provincial housing department says is the legal tenant, and therefore has the first option to buy the house.
However her sister, Marincia Johnson, is living in the back garage of the house and said Ross received preferential treatment to purchase the house that once belonged to their father.
Leanne Stellenberg, the founder of Association for Healing Through Art, who helps the community, said: “It appears that Shireen Ross had preferential treatment from the government officials because she benefited from a Reconstruction and Development Programme house previously and she gets a right of first refusal to purchase a property again, despite the numerous requests from her siblings to government officials to investigate the incorrect information provided to them.”
Edmund Du Plooy, the chairperson of Highbury Ratepayers Association in Kuilsriver, said: “We asked for the initial files of the house but they aren’t showing us any type of proof.”
However, Marcellino Martin, spokesperson for the department of Human Settlements said: “The process followed was procedurally correct.”
Martin said when Ross concluded a lease agreement with the department, she was not an owner of an RDP house.
@Sukainaish