Cape Town: Anti-Eviction Campaign March, 20 August

NEWFIELDS VILLAGE RESIDENTS AEC
Press Release – Monday 20th August – 10am

9 Cape Town communities to march over City’s Housing Company’s broken promises

The march takes place tomorrow – Tuesday 21st August 2007 at 11am. From Kaisersgracht to the Civic Centre in Cape Town.

For further information please call Gary Hartzenberg ph 0723925859

Background

In the year 2000, the City of Cape Town as the senior partner, together with the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) and funded by the National Housing Finance Corporation, built 2188 houses in nine communities all over the Metropole in areas such as Newfields Village, Hanover Park, Luyoloville, Philippi, Heideveld, Woodridge, Eastridge and Manenberg.

Upon occupation of their new homes, benficiaries discovered that they had moved into houses with major latent as well as patent defects like cracked walls, poor plumbing and constant foundational movement as houses had been built on Wetlands with no approval of plans and duplication of erf numbers, etc. The affected communities decided, after several attempts by them to get the authorities to rectify the situation, to go on mass protest action in order to address the problem at hand.

Current state of affairs

Late last year National Government mandated the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) to conduct a forensic audit of all houses built by the CTCHC, and accordingly R36 million was made available for the remedial work to be done on all the houses built. On the audit findings on the houses in question, beneficiaries found that the NHBRC had made a total mess of their task. People staying in maisonettes received an audit of people staying in a free-standing single story house; several had their defects under-stated, etc. These problems were brought to the attention to the provincial minister of housing and local government as well as the city and other stakeholders, all to no avail as up until today there was no response. Instead beneficiaries were given threatening letters over removal of ‘illegal’ structures, over boundaries and fences as well as letters of a so-called ‘payment solution’ without consultation between the City, the department of housing and the affected communities. Although a meeting has been scheduled for 16th Sept 2007 between the residents of Newfield’s Village and Minister Dyantyi to discuss the proposed payment options, the CTCHC has already sent letters to individual beneficiaries and giving them an ultimatum to respond on their 5 options. If residents do not respond in time or want a different solution, the CTCHC threaten to impose an instalment. The CTCHC knows full well that residents were given 5 minutes to peruse 30 documents and sign them before receiving their house keys. The CTCHC knows full well that residents were unfairly compelled to sign documents that the CTCHC wants to now rely on. THE CTCHC is behaving like the capitalist banks. They know full well that all that was promised in 2000 have not been delivered, such as rent being charged of R800 rather than the promised R150, R250 and R350 (the levels of the savings contributed beforehand).

The government’s claim of having built over 1 million houses since 1994 comes into sharp focus here. Are the units that were built really fit for human habitation? In the same breath, with the slow pace of delivery, will the homeless ever receive adequate housing under the current system?

All beneficiaries and their supporters will be marching to the Civic Centre in Cape Town on Tuesday 21st August 2007 to highlight their demands. A memorandum will be handed over to Councillor Ian Nielsen demanding the scrapping of all arrears and other relevant issues. The march will start at Keizergracht at 11am. The memorandum is scheduled to be handed over by 12 noon at the Civic centre.

***************************

Press Alert (from ashraf casseim aec_ash@yahoo.com.br)

Protest

There will be an action in the City of Cape Town on the 21 August 2008.This initiative was started by Eastridge Anti-Eviction Campaign also known as the Town Centre Village.

Where all residents of the Cape Town Community Housing Company (C.T.C.H.C) Village residents will be marching to the City of Cape Town to demand that all their arrears be scrapped. The list of grievances are endless and strated as early as 1999.

The march will start from Keizergracht down Darling street right into Adderly street until the city of Cape Town Civic Centre.

This action will point out that the delivery of Adequate Public Social Housing by a Private Companies does and and will not deliver social housing

for further information please contact contact:
Town Centre, Robert , 073 359 3229
Newfields Village, Gary, 072 3925859
Heideveld, Lungi, 082 510 0618
Hanover Park, Alma, 073 442 5619
Morgen’s Village, Ayesha, 076 857 2192
Stock Road, Lawrence, 073 209 2892
Woodridge, Cinthia, 079 485 2593
Luyoloville, Patrick,082 226 6467

Thank you and please feel free to inform all press.