By Malusi Booi - Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements
Cape Town - The story “Give Bromwell Street families emergency housing, City told” (Cape Times, February 7) perhaps deliberately misses the point of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment on this private eviction matter.
The SCA actually unanimously upheld the City’s appeal in the Bromwell Street matter, dismissing the High Court ruling, which deemed the City’s housing programme unconstitutional and invalid.
The applicants had demanded temporary emergency housing in the specific areas of Salt River, Woodstock City vindicated by SCA Bromwell ruling or the inner city, rejecting all offers of temporary emergency housing made by the City.
Due to a scarcity of land and prohibitive costs, the City has a policy of delivering affordable social rental housing on the limited municipal-owned land available to it for housing within central Cape Town.
This land is not earmarked for temporary emergency housing as the applicants demanded.
The Western Cape High Court order effectively ruled the City was obliged to provide temporary emergency housing in these well-located areas.
The City appealed on the basis that the ruling would fundamentally compromise the City’s social housing roll-out.
The SCA agreed and found that “the City was entitled to adapt its housing programme to address the effects of gentrification, among other challenges”.
It did so by identifying Woodstock, Salt River and the surrounds as areas that could be used to develop affordable social housing.”
The SCA further stated that the applicants – represented by Ndifuna Ukwazi – had failed to provide “any legal basis set out in support of this constitutional attack (on the City’s housing programme) anywhere in the papers”.
Cape Times
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