The City of Cape Town’s R22 million Garden City informal settlement upgrade project in Mfuleni is transforming the living conditions of hundreds of residents and also enables greater economic activity in the area to boost livelihoods.
The project comprises 467 individual serviced sites for qualifying beneficiaries from the Garden City informal settlement and surrounding community. It is expected to be completed by June 2021 if all goes according to plan and if community and beneficiary support for the project continues.
Beneficiaries will have access to individual water and sanitation services. The City has also installed formal stormwater infrastructure, paved access roads and pathways to enhance safety and access for basic and emergency services.
‘This is in line with the City’s commitment of bringing greater formality to informal settlements where it is possible to do so; to mainstream basic services provision and to improve the lives of our most vulnerable residents amid rapid urbanisation and growing informality. These upgrade projects are key interventions in addressing the need for affordable accommodation and of enhancing the safety of our residents who live in informal conditions.
‘Unlawful occupation, however, is a huge risk for this project, as with others across the metro. We will continue to act to protect our projects and stand up for our beneficiaries.
‘This project also enables economic opportunity and an economic stimulus in the area due to local labour deployment and other services, where possible,’ said the City’s Executive Mayor, Alderman Dan Plato.
‘We are not going to address the extreme housing need in Cape Town and in the rest of South Africa for that matter by focusing only on one type of housing delivery, the formal subsidy housing model or Breaking New Ground programme. We need to look at addressing the growing informality and budgets and plans should, and will, increasingly align to site and service models to ensure faster and larger scale delivery.
‘Urbanisation is not a municipal challenge alone, all tiers of government, the private sector and civic organisations, must work together and ensure that we are ahead of the curve with our plans to address rapid urbanisation. We must bring our communities on board with the alternative forms of accommodation that there are on offer, such as the upgrading of informal settlements,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Malusi Booi.