The City of Cape Town handed over eight homes today, 12 November 2021, at the City’s Harare Infill housing project in Khayelitsha. The first 28 homes were handed over to qualifying beneficiaries during the course of this week. The project will provide 900 qualifying beneficiaries with State-subsidised homes.
This housing project will see some of Cape Town’s most vulnerable residents become first-time property owners and create employment opportunities for the local community during the construction period. Construction of the houses is a multi-year project and in total R134,3 million has been budgeted. Construction is expected to be completed by late-2022, if all goes according to plan. The first 100 houses are planned to be handed over to beneficiaries before the end of this year. Some of the beneficiaries who received the keys to their new homes today include Grace Nodoli Bhunu and Victoria Butsheke. They were excited and pleased to be first time homeowners.
‘It is so rewarding to see homes completed and beneficiaries move in. We remain committed to housing provision and will continue to make every effort to deliver more housing opportunities that will empower many more residents as property owners. Thank you to the City’s project teams for their continued hard work despite volatile situations and Covid-19 in helping the City provide homes to our qualifying beneficiaries. In addition to the provision of houses, another aspect of this project is that it creates employment opportunities for those in the community as the contractors will be employing local enterprises and labour who are registered on the subcouncil database to work on site.
‘Over the coming months, we encourage the community to continue to support and work together with the City to ensure that this project stays on track. We look forward to the upcoming key handovers and seeing additional beneficiaries receive their housing opportunities. We congratulate the beneficiaries who have received their homes here today,’ said the City’s Human Settlement’s Directorate’s Executive Director, Nolwandle Gqiba.
The City held a housing consumer education session last week for the first-time homeowners of the project. These sessions aim to inform the beneficiaries of housing projects about the roles and responsibilities of being a property owner, about budgeting and personal finance, maintenance responsibilities and even about drafting a will.
Beneficiaries for this project, as is the case for all of the City’s housing projects, were selected in accordance with the City’s Housing Allocation Policy and Housing Needs Register to ensure opportunities are made available in a fair and transparent manner that prevents queue jumping and to those who qualify for housing as per the South African legislation.