ConCourt confirms there is no right to emergency accommodation in location of choice at State's expense
20 December 2024
In a judgment handed down in the ‘Bromwell Street’ private eviction matter on 20 December 2024, the Constitutional Court upheld the appeal and found against the City, but also confirmed that the Constitution does not guarantee a person a right to emergency housing at government expense at the location of their choice. This is a very welcome confirmation.
The City reiterates that it is not financially feasible for any municipality in South Africa to provide alternative accommodation for private evictions in the location of the evictees’ choice. This would be financially ruinous for every municipality and would absorb the entire State housing budget allocations, stopping all other spending on public housing. The Court has recognised this impossibility.
In 2017, the High Court granted an eviction order to a private owner of a Bromwell Street property. The occupants had demanded that the state (in this case, the City) provide temporary emergency housing in the specific areas of Salt River, Woodstock or the CBD, rejecting all offers of temporary emergency housing made by the City of Cape Town at the time.
The implication of this demand is that the State would have to provide emergency housing for any number of private evictions in the specific area of the eviction, and at the public’s cost. This is neither reasonable nor feasible, and the ConCourt has now confirmed this. We welcome this aspect of the judgment.
In other aspects of the case, the Court was critical of the City’s actions back in 2017, and upheld the applicants’ appeal, ruling that the City (in 2017) should have at least considered offering emergency accommodation in Woodstock back then, and that a policy must be in place that enables this to be considered on a reasonable, rational basis in future.
The City accepts the Court guidance with respect to the need for a policy (over and above the Housing Act and Code) regarding offers of temporary emergency accommodation.
Following the ConCourt judgment, the City will proceed to determine the number of occupants remaining at Bromwell Street, including their socio-economic conditions, before further engagements on alternative emergency accommodation taking into account the currently available options.
The City’s focus has been on developing more social housing on the limited municipal owned available land in these central Cape Town areas. Any change in use of this land for emergency accommodation will only lead to less social housing in these areas, and this will certainly be the consequence of the Court’s decision.
In the first two years since the inception of Cape Town’s Mayoral Priority Programme in 2022 to accelerate land release for affordable housing, the City has already released sites with a yield of over 4 200 affordable units, including in Cape Town’s inner city and other well-located economic nodes.
The City’s affordable housing pipeline includes land parcels expected to deliver over 12 000 residential opportunities across the metro.
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
