Council to release land for 1800-unit inner city housing project
26 October 2023
Council address - 26 October 2023
Madam Speaker,
Fellow Councillors,
Honoured guests and members of the public,
Goeiemôre, molweni, as-salam alaykum, shalom, good morning.
Colleagues,
Even as our city and our country have come together so wonderfully in support of our sports teams, so we have watched in growing alarm as the world increasingly has been rent apart by the horrors of war.
This most ancient and sad of conflicts evokes the most heated passions among people the world over, and almost anything said is taken not at face value, but as evidence of partisanship.
In such a time it is perhaps unrealistic to expect measured and nuanced dialogue, and there is almost nothing constructive one can add to the debate raging on around the world right now.
All one feels capable of doing at a time like this is reasserting the best of our basic humanity.
We reassert our belief in the innate and infinite value of each human life regardless of background or birthplace, faith or creed. We reassert that life so valuable should be protected and respected.
We reassert that children in particular are a special blessing and gift from God, and that there is nothing, no context, no cause, that could ever justify the killing of children.
We can, I believe, also take some pride in the example of our city – a true cultural, religious and historic melting pot where Muslims, Jews, and Christians have lived together for centuries.
I think of the history of District Six, and of present-day Salt River and Woodstock. Of shopping in each other's shops, and respecting each other's holy days.
Even in recent days, groups of protestors have made their voice heard loudly, but have done so peacefully and within the law, with only a few small exceptions.
In these ways Cape Town is modelling what is possible, and is showing the world that we can resist the bitter division of those leaders and politicians seeking attention, and that rancour need not be permanent.
In that way, I am prouder than ever of Cape Town.
So whether we say 'salam' or 'shalom', both have the same root, both mean peace, and we all pray that peace returns soon.
Colleagues,
Before we move on to the serious matters before Council today, allow me a moment to congratulate both our Springbok rugby team and our Proteas cricket team for their outstanding victories on Saturday over the old foe, England, in both the Rugby and Cricket World Cups.
To beat England in any sporting event is worth celebrating, but to do so twice in one day in two different World Cups – and, in the case of the rugby, in a must-win semifinal match – is almost unheard of.
So well done, Bokke, and well done Proteas. You have done us proud, and I assure you that you have a nation behind you cheering loud enough for you to hear us all the way in France and India.
I just ask, respectfully, that you don't leave it as late and cut it as fine as you did on Saturday night. I'm not sure our country could go through that again.
Our city will be hosting free public fan parks in Bree Street in the CBD, in Langa at the Langa Sports Hall and in Mitchells Plain at Portlands Civic, and there are dozens of other community organised events across the city.
Madame Speaker,
Today is an important day for the delivery of our pledge of more affordable housing in Cape Town, because today before Council we have the final land release of the Pickwick Road site in Salt River.
This site comprises 3.2 hectares of very well-located land, just minutes away from the work opportunities of the CBD, and the many major access roads and public transport routes that service the area.
With its prime location, the Pickwick site has everything we are looking for when it comes to land parcels suited to this kind of social housing development.
It will yield around 1800 residential opportunities, including 840 social housing units and 960 open market units, as part of a mixed-use development. This is up from the forecasted 600 social housing units, and we are pleased that our newly adopted land release guidelines are maximising social housing yield, as intended.
Pickwick is the latest land release under our Mayoral Priority Programme, which has now seen various approval and release milestones reached in the past year for more than 2 000 social housing units across seven land parcels.
In addition to our own land release programme, we have also helped enable 430 social housing units in the well located city suburb of Pinelands, for phase one of the Western Cape Government's Conradie Park development, and we are providing very significant financial support at another province precinct, at Founder's Garden here in the CBD.
And we're about to start tenanting at the 1 000-unit Goodwood Station social housing project, where the City provided development grant funding, land for parking, and various incentives to enable this development.
This follows the tenanting recently of our 204-unit Maitland Mews social housing development in central Cape Town.
These affordable rentals are an absolute game changer for families with a combined monthly income of less than R22 000, with homes in well-located areas close to economic and transport hubs now within their reach.
I am truly excited at the prospect of all these parcels of land being turned into beautiful and affordable homes for thousands of Cape Town families, and I am grateful that we have such a productive partnership with our social housing companies here in Cape Town.
But it also has to be said that our project of delivering affordable social housing has not been without its challenges. And right at the top of the list of challenges is the national social housing subsidy regime, which has not changed in five years, has not kept pace with inflation, and is not enough to really ignite the viability of the social housing sector.
National subsidies are critical to making the social housing model work – together with the discounted land released by the city and the blended finance put forward by the developer.
It was very encouraging when the Human Settlements Minister, Mmamoloko Kubayi, announced in March this year that this subsidy regime would be increased.
I do appreciate the Social Housing Regulatory Authority committing the availability of the increased subsidy quantum to the Social Housing sector via a circular issued in September. This has rendered the much awaited Pine Road and Dillon Lane projects in Woodstock financially viable. This is land that the City has already released for development, and will hopefully be enough for construction to go ahead on these two projects, both of which are in the inner city.
But as National Treasury's own outlook for the social housing sector shows, raised subsidies are crucial for project viability.
At the time of announcing the plan to increase the subsidy, Minister Kubayi stated that "…the situation is such that we are compelled to effect another increase; otherwise more projects will be left incomplete and construction companies will find it hard to survive".
I could not agree more with the Minister. The mid-term budget speech to be delivered in Parliament next week is the perfect opportunity for the Finance Minister and the national government to formalise that commitment.
I look forward to seeing it included there.
Colleagues,
We have no doubt all seen the news in recent weeks of how precarious the nation's financial situation is, after an under-collection of tax revenue of more than R80bn.
In recent weeks we have seen the yields on government bonds spike alarmingly, as the funding market raises serious questions about the ability of the national state to pay its bills.
We've also seen the leaked Treasury letter forewarning of serious intra year budget cuts.
We have recently received distressing confirmation of upcoming cuts to Conditional Grants for local governments across the country, including to ours, which will have a big negative impact on our ability to deliver housing to the poorest.
Both our Urban Settlements Development Grant and our Informal Settlements Upgrading Grant have been earmarked for substantial cuts.
These cuts amount to more than R100m slashed directly from housing and informal settlement budgets servicing our most vulnerable communities. We in Cape Town object in the strongest possible terms to these anti-poor budget cuts.
These cuts are regressive and will impact on poor residents the most.
Which brings me to the third instance of reduced funding from national government, and that is the anticipated top slicing of the Equitable Share to provinces and local government in the forthcoming Medium Term Budget Policy Framework.
No numbers have been officially confirmed yet, but all indications are that Cape Town and other towns and cities are about to lose a portion of their Equitable Share allocation.
This comes as the recently published Census data shows that Cape Town has seen a substantial population increase of almost 28% between the 2021 census and the last census in 2011.
The census confirms that the Western Cape has rocketed up the population rankings, from 5th to 3rd most populous province. Cape Town has gone from 3rd most populous to 2nd most populous city – just 100 000 people behind Jo'burg.
Cape Town will soon overtake Jo'burg as South Africa's biggest city, and will very soon cross over the 5 million person mark.
In accordance with these figures, our Equitable Share should be increasing, not decreasing.
And these cuts don't only affect the running of the City. My colleague in Provincial government, Premier Alan Winde, has spoken at great length about the looming crisis in the Western Cape that will be brought about by cuts to both the Equitable Share and Conditional Grants in the province.
He rightly points out that the national government's inability to fund the 2023 medium-term expenditure framework – through a perfect storm of low tax revenue, crippling debt costs, load-shedding and an unfunded increase to the public sector wage bill – is simply being passed on to provincial and local governments to absorb.
He is entirely correct when he says that this is unacceptable.
This has consequences for infrastructure funding too.
Look at our nation's big cities and anyone can see that essential infrastructure is being neglected – there is a dire shortfall in investment. But these are precisely the projects that must be funded.
I saw this coming in September already, when news of the bad tax receipts was first announced. Then, I made the case in an opinion piece in the Sunday Times that far from cutting infrastructure funding, actually every single infrastructure project that meets the quality and readiness threshold set by Infrastructure South Africa should be funded.
We have gone to great lengths in Cape Town in these past two years to demonstrate the importance of investment in infrastructure – particularly in the water and sanitation space – and I would add our City's successful Social Housing programme to this.
Cape Town accounts for 50% of metro infrastructure spending in South Africa over the next 3 years.
We need more of this, not less.
If it is a viable project and pro-poor, it must be funded.
If there are to be cuts, as there clearly need to be, these should come from government departments that serve no meaningful purpose – and there are several of those – or from unnecessary expenditure like R3,5 billion for VIP security for Ministers.
Expenditure that is aimed directly at improving the lives of the poor, upgrading services in informal settlements, delivering housing, or building essential infrastructure, should be protected at all costs.
Cutting these grants, and any further cuts announced next week which impact on basic service delivery, are a direct attack on those of our residents who rely on these basic services the most.
These cuts are immoral and indefensible.
The fact is that these cuts show that our national government has chosen to protect highly paid cadres while cutting services in informal settlements.
I call on the national government to consider the plight of the people directly affected by these cuts, and to then reverse this regressive decision.
I appeal today to both the Finance Minister and the President: You have an imminent opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to building the kind of South Africa that we are trying to build here in Cape Town – progressive, pro-poor and pro-growth.
I understand the financial constraints facing the Minister in this mid-term budget, and that there is no magic money tree for him to harvest. But I also know that the cuts proposed so far are absolutely the wrong decision.
We are doing everything in our power to deliver projects that serve our metro's poorest communities, but we need national government to meet us on site with their end of the bargain.
That is how we will make progress – not only here in Cape Town, but across the entire South Africa.
Now, friends, enough of all that serious stuff.
It is now time for the most serious thing of all.
We are 58 hours away from battle.
All of us can feel the excitement and the nerves building.
This Springbok team has brought our country together like never before.
Now that we face our biggest test ever, we want them to know that we are behind them even more than ever before.
We are willing them on, screaming our lungs out.
We can't all be in Paris with them, but we're shouting so loud they will hear us from there.
And as one people, with one heart and as one voice, we are shouting "Go Bokke, Go Bokke, Go Bokke!"
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
