Clive Jacobs, Lavender Hill
For the past year or more it’s so upsetting to see how residents are evicted out of a home they made themselves comfortable in.
The City of Cape Town must take responsibility and accountability for wrongs and apartheid strategy.
The way the City and Western Cape Government evicts people creates unhappiness, and breaks up happy homes.
How can they expect to win over the people that need to vote soon.
So many tenants are being removed through evictions set up by the City within the greater Retreat, Steenberg and Lavender Hill. People are going through a tough patch as they are served with eviction orders and heavy threats by the coordinators at Retreat housing office.
Our communities are not readily investigated. Our coloured mothers and fathers are not being informed about the Constitution of housing. A few officials answered and raised their voices when they sat in the interview suites.
On Sunday March 3, I met with seven different tenants in seven different flats that were told by a housing official in a coordinator’s role that you better pack your bags and bring the keys to the housing office before we do it for you.
In another report to me, a certain very rude housing official told an elder to look for a seniors’ home to live in or an alternative as “you can’t live on your own in a three bedroom apartment with foreigners”.
- The City of Cape Town responds: The City’s Public Housing Department is aware of the residents’ matters and will remain in contact with the affected tenants to assist them where possible.
As a caring City, we are committed to assisting all lawful tenants in City-owned units across the metro and we encourage all residents who need assistance to approach us. We also look at regularising tenancy to make it lawful where possible and allowed within established policy.
In general, the City found that many residents who are unlawfully occupying units are either not registered on the City’s Housing Needs Register or have very recent application dates, which is not fair to those who have been registered for a long time. This effectively takes away opportunities from applicants who have followed the correct procedure of registering on the housing database and who are waiting patiently to be assisted.
