Photo: GroundUp
Photo: GroundUp
Housing activists Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) have called out the city of Cape Town for encouraging the rapid displacement of its poorer inhabitants, in a report published this week.
The group claim that the spiralling rent and property costs are causing poverty-stricken families to be relocated against their will, just like apartheid spatial planning.
This report highlights how rapid gentrification is creating a vicious cycle: When residents cannot afford the increasing rentals, they are sent to one of the city’s relocation camps like Wolwerivier or Blikkiesdorp, which are far away from the CBD.
Families and providers then have to spend more on travel to work, making their situation even more desperate and driving youths – with fewer opportunities for education and employment – to gang culture.
Read: Think tank urges Cape Town to end its housing apartheid
According to NU, they have been completely betrayed by regional authorities and government:
“Evictions and Displacement are primarily driven by a property price bubble and hikes in rent. This is compounded by a poor supply of affordable housing in the private sector and the utter failure of all three spheres of government to build well-located affordable housing. Relocation camps entrench apartheid spatial planning and are the contemporary equivalent to forced-removals.”
The activists are proposing that abandoned buildings (old hospitals, disused spaces) are used as temporary living spaces for citizens being outmuscled by big business.
Read: Housing activists have occupied a disused building in Cape Town for more than a month
The Western Cape High Court is currently mulling an application on behalf of the community of a row of houses in Bromwell Street, Woodstock, which was sold for redevelopment.