Dignity through property-ownership: Next chapter of City’s unique home-ownership drive launched
22 October 2023
Mrs Patricia Fortune, 62, from Beacon Valley is the latest successful beneficiary of the City’s unique home-ownership transfer at no cost programme. It includes, among others, City-tenants becoming owners of their rental units. City Mayco Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Carl Pophaim, visited Mrs Fortune with some flowers and something sweet to celebrate the launch of the next chapter of this exciting dignity-through-property-ownership programme. He, together with Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, will be boosting this programme over the coming weeks and months with more qualifying beneficiaries in line to receive their title deeds at no cost.
‘This has been a special visit with Mrs Fortune. We’re the only metro in South Africa that has this initiative and we will continue to pioneer new ways to ensure redress and dignity for our most vulnerable residents. We have about 22 000 City-owned units (rental units, delayed transfer units and services sites) where qualifying beneficiaries could take ownership of their units at no cost. This is part of a Mayoral Priority Programme launched about a year ago and I sincerely thank our officials, the Mayor and our beneficiaries for the hard work. I am here to further drive this programme to even greater heights.
‘We’ve allocated almost R40 million for these “no-cost transfers” over the next three years. Through this programme, we are also funding the attorney transfer fees, and insurance costs the units from the date of sale until the registration of the property. One of our focus areas is education and we are looking at more advanced programmes to help our beneficiaries that receive properties with financial management, drawing up wills, how to maintain property and an array of useful and empowering information. In our formal housing programmes where we build and hand over houses, we already have extensive consumer education services that we offer.
‘Owning a property, especially if you have previously been denied the opportunity to own a property due to racially-based legislation, is an absolutely life-changing opportunity which brings dignity and it means there is a family asset for generations to come.
‘I will be visiting more of our beneficiaries over the weeks and months to come. We are building Cape Town Together. This truly is a City of Hope and I am proud to be a part of this new chapter and of rewriting the story of Cape Town,’ said Councillor Pophaim.
This Mayoral Priority Programme of transfer at no cost entails the ownership transfer of: • The legal tenant of City-owned rental unit;
• Purchasers of delayed transfer units and;
• Historic serviced sites
Categories of properties and requirements:
Legal City tenants in good standing currently occupying:
• Free standing houses
• Semi-detached houses
• Terraced houses (row houses)
• Maisonettes
• Historic site and service units
• Delayed transfer units
For more information or for potential applicants, please:
Contact us:
Human Settlements Directorate's Call Centre: 021 444 0333
WhatsApp: 063 299 9927
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
