Pretoria - The City of Tshwane is set to open public applications for eligible residents to apply for low cost housing at the much anticipated Marabastad Townlands social housing project.
Executive Mayor Randall Williams and MMC for Housing and Human Settlements Mpho Mehlape-Zimu did an oversight inspection of the construction site and announced that applications would be open to the public between September 20 and October 1.
Mehlape-Zimu said people must just remember that applications would be followed by rigorous screening processes as there are plans to allocate the first group of residents at the beginning of December .
This project has been in construction for 20 years but only started accelerating in 2016 with ambitions to bring low-cost social housing closer to the Pretoria CBD where ordinary people could not afford to live and subsequently travelled longer distances to their places of work
It will be a new residency in Pretoria with 1 200 units boasting modern amenities such as a community hall, crèche, football pitch, netball, and volleyball fields, outdoor gym, shops, vegetable garden, and other recreational facilities.
The development offers affordable housing by making housing units available to qualifying households within the City area of jurisdiction. The project will be delivered in two phases; phase 1 which consists of 691 units while phase 2 consists of 509 units.
The City envisages the development to revive the area and it also aims to undo the settlement patterns of the past where low-income households were located far away from economic opportunities. The project is strategically located to major transport routes and many other public amenities.
Chief executive of the implementation firm, Housing Company Tshwane, Obakeng Nyundu took Williams and Mehlape-Zimu on an oversight visit of the site to showcase work completed since construction resumed after the lockdown that interrupted construction last year March.
"The biggest challenges we actually had was the flow of material because most of the work that had to be done at manufacturing was slowed down by the impact of the lockdown. There were other technicalities for instance, because of the delay, regulations regarding fire changed. We had to redo all the fire doors," said Nyundu.
Williams said this was one of the biggest social housing projects in the country that will have the 691 units being townhouses while 509 units will be apartments.
"The townhouses will be completed by November and the apartments will be completed by March next year. A lot of progress has been made in a slow period of time and we plan to allocate people by December.
"It cannot be that a city is only a place of work and after 6pm there is no one around. We want to have a city where people live, work and play and that is our new vision for the city."
QUALIFYING CRITERIA
* You must be 18 years or older, employed and be able to pay monthly rent.
* You must be a South African citizen with a household income of between R1500 and R15000.
* You must be married or single with dependants or cohabiting with a partner. One application per household.
* You must not own a property.
* You must not have benefited from any government housing scheme or subsidy.
* You must have a clean credit record and not be under debt review.
Pretoria News