The City’s Human Settlements Portfolio Committee conducted an oversight visit to Lotus River to have a look at recently completed refurbishment at five City Community Residential Units. In the current financial year, some R284,7 million has been allocated for public housing maintenance. Income from the subsidised rental payments is used for maintenance.
On Friday , 21 October 2022, the City’s Portfolio Chairperson of the Human Settlement Committee, Councillor Anda Ntsodo, and committee members visited five blocks of flats that have received a facelift recently.
‘Work done includes the painting of the buildings and the replacement of old windows with new aluminum windows. It is good to see the work done and the City’s commitment to maintaining these affordable housing units. This maintenance project is a work in progress and the next step is the repair work to the staircases. The design work and tender processes are under way. Rental income is used for the maintenance and we encourage tenants to pay their rent as it helps the City to maintain the units.
‘In the past five years over R1 billion has been spent on maintaining and upgrading of City rental stock. A lot of work still need to be done because the City has a very large rental portfolio. We are also ensuring we provide oversight on the City’s plans to enhance the turnaround times of service requests. Dents have been made in the service-related backlogs that came about during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. There are various public housing service-focused improvements being made which is expected to decrease service turnaround times.
‘Sadly, by far the majority of the service requests are related to vandalism. Together with the City, we urge tenants to help fight the scourge of vandalism so that money can be spent on upgrades rather than fixing vandalised doors and windows among others,’ said Councillor Ntsodo.