The City’s Mayoral Committee has recommended to Council the land release of an erf in the Blue Downs vicinity for a mixed use, integrated affordable housing development.
This is the City’s Accelerated Land Release for Affordable Housing Programme in action to unlock development opportunities while driving meaningful economic growth.
‘The well-located land parcel is approximately 26 000 m² in size and is intended to provide opportunities for a variety of housing options and types. This includes multi-storey apartments, units that are financed through the Help Me Buy A Home/Finance-Linked Individual Subsidy programme for first-time home buyers and serviced sites to enable greater access to affordable housing for those earning below R22 000 per month.
‘The plans for the site include social, recreational, service and retail/commercial uses that are crucial to healthy, well-performing neighbourhoods. There is much work to be done to realise our vision for this land, but we are utterly committed to creating inclusive, integrated neighbourhoods here and across the metro.
‘In general, the city currently has more than 6 500 social housing units in the overall pipeline across 50 land parcels city-wide, including 2 000 social housing units in the central Cape Town area. There are also 2 500 opportunities nearing completion or about to begin construction along the Voortrekker Road Corridor and near important economic nodes. We call on all partners to join our movement for more social housing, affordable housing, and mixed-use development so that we can build Cape Town, together,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, councillor Malusi Booi.
The erf in question is an undeveloped public road crossing the land to be developed. To provide the maximum housing opportunities it is necessary to close the erf in question. The proposed closure was advertised in the media and notices were served on affected abutting property owners on 11 July 2022. All due process has been followed.
‘This is another important project in our mission to unlock meaningful economic growth by looking differently at how we leverage municipal assets for inclusive development. We are continuing our quest to investigate and make available land across the metro to not only enable more inclusivity in the housing market but to enable transactions that will unlock commercial opportunities and thus investment and job creation,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, alderman James Vos.
The City launched its Land Release Programme as a priority programme of Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis at its Housing Indaba in April 2022. It aims to unlock and drive the potential for a large-scale public private sector affordable housing programme and much work has been done since the launch.
It focuses on:
- A more fluid and rapid pipeline of land release for social housing
- Identifying large mixed-use sites for private sector development
- Unlocking the massive potential of micro-developers
- Developing an enabling environment to accelerate land release
Some social and affordable housing projects under way:
- City-supported/enabled projects with developer nearing construction phase include Pine Road (+/- 240 units) and Dillon Road (+/- 150 units) in Woodstock; Salt River Market (+/- 200 units)
- Projects undergoing land use management processes to be made available for social housing include New Market (+/- 200 units); Pickwick (+/- 600 units); and Woodstock Hospital (+/-700 units).
- The first precinct in Parow (+/- 350 units) for release to the market within the current year.
- City-supported/enabled with developer in Maitland (+/- 200 units) is under construction.
