City releases new site for inner-city social housing

The City has released a new site for social housing in the heart of Cape Town.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis told a council meeting at the end of last month that the New Market Street site, on the corner of Newmarket Street and opposite Russell Street on the edge of Woodstock, would be used for social housing.

Currently a 9000m² municipal-owned parking area, it would provide space for a mixed-used development with 375 social-housing units, cross-subsidised by retail space and more than 300 Gap and market-rental units, he said.

“This property is in a prime location in Woodstock, close to all amenities and public transport, and just five minutes from the City centre,” he said.

“It is the kind of address that will change the lives of the 200 tenants and their families who will be moving in upon completion.”

The units would be a game changer for qualifying residents who earned less than R22 000 a month, he said.

“Built on well-located land close to the city centre or other business nodes, they place lower-income Capetonians right on the doorstep of opportunities, jobs, schools and other services."

Municipal-owned properties in central Cape Town released to social housing developers to date would yield more than 4 900 "affordable" units, including more than 2 100 social housing units, he said.

“They include Newmarket Street, Pine Road, Dillon Lane, and Pickwick in Woodstock, as well as Salt River Market and the now tenanted Maitland Mews development,” he said.

Yusrah Bardien, spokesperson for the housing activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi, welcomed the announcement, saying: “We have been waiting for this for several years in the face of a worsening housing crisis."

The New Market Street site was at the edge of Woodstock and the inner city where no forms of affordable housing had been built in three decades of democracy, she said.

“We welcome this development and the urgency with which the mayor is approaching the matter. We look forward to the turning of sods and the arrival of construction cranes as soon as possible."