Driven by delivery: Building our City of Hope through Human Settlements delivery
16 May 2025
STATEMENT BY THE CITY’S MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS, COUNCILLOR CARL POPHAIM
The City is hard at work with its roll out of massive Human Settlements projects across the metro. Approximately 98% of the current year’s Human Settlements budget, including grant funding, is expected to be spent by July 2025.
Since joining the City as the Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, I have made it my mission to help build a city of hope through the programmes of our Human Settlements Directorate. Our consistent delivery speaks for itself – demonstrated daily through tangible action on the ground in our communities and reflected in our grant spending which consistently reaches between 98 to 99%. It is therefore disingenuous for some commentators and even politicians to claim that the City only serves a select few, when in fact our work prioritises the most vulnerable in our society and the audited data backs this up.
Human Settlements grant funding goes directly into the communities who need it most and we will be doing so much more in the new financial year. Grant funding spend is an incredibly important indicator of service delivery and a pro poor focus, as it is earmarked for the most vulnerable communities, for Human settlements projects and basic services.
There are also large-budget Human Settlements projects being rolled out across the metro including in Macassar, Durbanville, Kraaifontein, Khayelitsha, Helderberg, Delft, Philippi, Nyanga, Atlantis, the Cape Flats, Hout Bay and central Cape Town among many others. At the heart of successful progress and delivery is support from community members, councillors, project steering committees, contractors, project managers and management across many City departments.
Our Human Settlements Directorate plans to spend approximately R8,3bn in capital and operational budget on affordable housing projects, as well as on the enhancement of service delivery projects across the metro over the next three years.
Over the next three years, the City’s draft budget for Human Settlements plans to allocate
• More than R831 million for the provision of the traditional subsidy housing (Breaking New Ground) with a focus on our elderly beneficiaries, child-headed households and beneficiaries with disabilities.
• Approximately R1,3 billion to upgrading informal settlements
• R1,5 billion for scaling up our provision of serviced sites
• Approximately R1,9 billion set aside in total capital and operational budget for the upgrade and maintenance of our Council flats over the medium term.
• R32,9 million for the No Cost Transfer and R4 million for the Title Deeds programmes for the 2025/26 financial year.
Game changing affordable housing development
Our affordable housing agenda as the City is unparalleled in the country despite our challenging and diverse context in Cape Town.
As a City, we look at all points of departure. Not only does our affordable housing provide opportunities for those earning in some cases up to R32 000 per month, the aesthetically pleasing projects offer accommodation in well-located areas close to transport and work centres. These projects also boost local areas with infrastructure investment and rejuvenation.
Through our flagship priority land release programme, the City has in the past two years released land parcels offering more than 4 000 residential opportunities now available for affordable development and we have a portfolio of approximately 5 000 constructed and completed Social Housing units in well-located areas across the metro.
With some 12 000 opportunities for affordable rental housing opportunities in the pipeline in urban centres across Cape Town, we firmly believe that our plans for affordable housing development will be a game-changer, bringing much-needed accommodation, and an economic boost to the city, especially in the inner city.
We’re moving with pace to Building our City of Hope and we will continue to do all that we can to provide affordable housing and to enhancing services in our communities.
End
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
