The City of Cape Town plans to tackle Cape Town’s housing needs in a multi pronged approach that will deliver housing opportunities to lower income families in an incremental manner.

The plan, which has recently been updated, covers a five year period from 2009/10 to 2013/14.

In line with international trends, it advocates high density affordable housing solutions in appropriate locations in a sustainable manner – financially, institutionally and socially. It also delineates the Housing Directorate’s efforts to identify suitable pockets of land where developments can be close to job opportunities and transportation networks.

The plan aligns with the recent statement by the National Minister for Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale in which he acknowledged that government cannot provide houses for all.

In essence, the strategy, which identifies a range of housing delivery options that will provide initial basic services, such as water and sanitation facilities to some communities and permanent homes to others, forms the foundation of the City’s attempts to address the problem of urbanisation. In tackling this problem, the City has adopted an incremental approach towards formal housing.

This approach is based on stabilisation of the informal settlement areas through the establishment of a presence in these areas to build relationships as well as provide support. The Informal Settlement Management Section and the Anti- Land Invasion Unit are the main role players in this process. It also provides for the roll out of essential services to these areas in order to support safe and healthy liveable areas is carried out by the Informal Settlement Planning and Services Sections.

The plan also details how the Housing Directorate will implement the various National Housing programmes to provide security of tenure and shelter to people in need. It includes those people living in backyards, informal settlements and anyone registered on the City’s housing database. National Government’s Housing programme allows for a variety of housing opportunities to be provided, such as the upgrading of existing rental stock, informal settlement upgrading, new rental stock, land acquisition, formal housing delivery and emergency housing.

The City plans to boost the development of social housing and informal housing by developers; the developing of subsidy (BNG) housing; the hostel re-development programme, and; will provide subsidised rental accommodation.

The City is installing infrastructure for housing units in areas such as Bardale, Wallacedene, Delft, Happy Valley, Khayelitsha Site C, Mfuleni, Eastridge, Nongubela, Nyanga and Philippi East.

Announcing the revised Five-Year Plan, Mayoral Committee Member for Housing, Cllr Shehaam Sims, said that the plan for the 2009 - 2014 period is aligned to the National Housing Department’s Breaking New Ground policies, the Provincial Isidima Initiative (the Western Cape’s Sustainable Human Settlement Strategy to fulfil Government’s promise of creating ‘a home for all in the Western Cape’) and the City’s own Integrated Development Plan.

In the coming year, the City has fully allocated its annual subsidy budget of R663 million for housing projects, and has added further funds for the upgrade of informal settlements and maintenance of rental stock.

"The City recently bought a total of 380 hectares of land in Fisantekraal, Kalkfontein, Joostenbergvlakte, Vlakteplaas, Strand, Atlantis and Hout Bay for new housing developments,” she said. This will form the basis for the next five to eight year housing delivery plan.

"One of the City’s major challenges is the need for more land for housing. Land values have skyrocketed over the past few years which makes the acquisition of large tracts of land exorbitantly expensive for the municipality.

"One option is to construct multi-storey apartment buildings to address this challenge. Densification needs further research before the City settles on the best options,” Cllr Sims said.

In support of this approach the current upgrade project to rejuvenate existing rental stock and the building of new rental stock forms part of the Five Year Plan.

“We are cognisant of the current expressed need, often termed the housing backlog, of some 400 000 people in need of housing in Cape Town," she added.