The City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Malusi Booi, conducted a site visit at the City’s Harare Infill housing project in Khayelitsha to check on its progress. The project will provide 900 qualifying beneficiaries with State-subsidised homes. The City is continuing with work at its housing projects, even amid the resurgence of Covid-19 and amended lockdown regulations. The necessary health and safety protocols are in place.
Photo by City of Cape Town
The City’s Human Settlements Directorate has completed the internal services which includes roads, stormwater, water, sewer infrastructure and electrical infrastructure. Approximately R43 million was budgeted for internal services, and it has been spent during 2020/21 financial year.
The internal services were completed during November 2020 and construction of houses commenced during February 2021. 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 2021 if all goes according to plan.
“I am pleased to see this mega project progressing well because it means we are closer to seeing our beneficiaries move into their new homes. In this phase some R114 million has been budgeted for. We visited this project about 18 months ago and much work has been done since then. 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 across the metro.
“In addition to the provision of houses, another aspect of this project is that it will create employment opportunities for those in the community as the contractors will be employing local enterprises and labour who are registered on the sub council 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 schedule so that we are able to soon celebrate the handover of these houses to our qualifying beneficiaries and their families,’ said Councillor Booi.
Beneficiaries for this project, as is the case for all 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.
