Cape Town – The City of Cape Town has budgeted more than R11 million for repair and maintenance work at its community residential units (CRUs) in Ocean View.
The City’s Human Settlements Directorate has a priority investment in public housing maintenance and repairs of more than R1.2 billion over the next three years, and the repairs include the replacement of staircases, among other things.
Mayco member for Human Settlements Carl Pophaim and officials from the directorate visited Sonja Block in the area on Tuesday to check on the progress of the maintenance, which is part of the city's priority programme driving investment in public housing.
“Public housing is a priority programme for the City and for me and we are set to really ramp up maintenance and upgrade work over the next several months.
“Since 2018, approximately R200m has been spent on staircase upgrades in particular, which includes the repair and replacement of more than 1 300 priority staircases.
“In addition, at the end of last year, R30m was made available for the staircase programme in Lavender Hill, Lotus River, and Ocean View, where we visited on Tuesday.
“Because of the huge demand for repairs at our rental units, we focus on critical, emergency work across the metro, with health and safety considerations as the most important priorities.
“The City uses rental income for maintenance and due to the amount of work that needs to be completed, the City has to be cautious about what it prioritises,” Pophaim said.
Most of the service requests were for units that had been vandalised, he said. “By working together to prevent vandalism, we could use our limited resources to prioritise other urgent maintenance matters.”
He said the City was one of the biggest landlords in the country and an estimated 160 000 people benefited from the affordable rental public housing units operated by the City.
“There are many challenges in public housing but I am committed to stepping up our efforts to find new ways of addressing the most urgent priorities within the finite budgetary and human resources that we have,” Pophaim said.