As part of the City of Cape Town’s commitment to maintaining its affordable housing rental stock, comprising some 57 500 units, Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Malusi Booi, has unveiled a new initiative that will see repairs and maintenance service request backlogs done by trained and supported small and medium-sized contractors. This is a R150 million partnership between the City and the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC).
The City is committed to maintaining and upgrading its rental stock: Over the past two years, it has spent more than R1 billion in maintenance and upgrades of its public housing units. Due to the vast number of rental stock units, low levels of income collected from rental money and limited resources, there are repairs and maintenance service request backlogs that have occurred. The City’s partnership with the NHFC not only aims to address these backlogs, but it will see the training and financing of small to medium contractors and suppliers to help with the maintenance and repairs of public housing.
The NHFC will manage the database of contractors and suppliers, train and appoint Project Steering Committees and Community Liaison Officers. All due process will be followed.
‘The initiative will be rolled out across the metro in all our rental units. The supply chain management processes should take about two or three months before we will likely see teams working at our units. It gives people in the community and surrounds the chance to change their lives while at the same time, improving the living conditions of our tenants. I hope this initiative will lay the foundation for a lasting legacy of empowerment, skills transfer, new beginnings and a better life for all involved. We thank the National Housing Finance Corporation for partnering with us and we look forward to the great rewards that this initiative can bring if we all stand together in our communities, work together to bring change and ensure that we collaborate and cooperate even amid the challenges that exist in our communities. As a city, we remain dedicated to the maintenance programme of our affordable public housing units and we’ve spent approximately R1 billion over the past two years in maintenance and upgrades. We are also dependent on rental income to repair and maintain our public housing units and we encourage our tenants to pay what they can or to talk to us about making payment arrangements because every little bit helps us to improve our rental stock. We will provide further updates as this initiative progresses and we thank our tenants for their support,’ said Councillor Booi.
‘We are excited to be partnering with the City of Cape Town and communities on this initiative. We’ll be publishing an expression of interest to participate in this programme on 9 October 2020. All contractors will be appointed in accordance with a competitive bid process. This programme will run for three years and apart from the financial, compliance and technical support that will be provided, the contractors will be accredited in terms of grade 1 to 3 of the Construction Industry Development Board. We look forward to going from strength to strength with the emerging contractors and encourage interested parties to take part in the programme,’ said the General Manager: Programme Management of the NHFC, Mr Qaqambile Mangqalaza.