Cape Times: City considers building 6 000-unit towns 14 storeys high to ease housing problem

http://www.capetimes.co.za/?fArticleId=5133773

City considers building 6 000-unit towns 14 storeys high to ease housing problem

August 21, 2009 Edition 2

ANÉL LEWIS

THE City of Cape Town will need to triple its housing delivery to about 38 000 “housing opportunities” annually to keep pace with the growing demand for shelter, and this means it needs to build upwards.

The lack of available land for housing means the city will have to consider creating high-density “integrated towns” with 6 000 housing units of up to 14 storeys.

They would be built in “towns”, and each would have necessary facilities such as schools.

The city council provided 10 000 housing opportunities this year, the city’s manager of land and forward planning, Basil Davidson, said.

Housing opportunities are defined as dwelling places or serviced sites.

But with the number of people demanding shelter increasing by in-migration of between 18 000 and 20 000 each year, the city will need to accelerate its delivery.

Davidson said national government allocations for housing needed to reflect the impact of people moving to the Western Cape from other provinces.

“We are grappling with the impact of migration and the delivery (of houses).”

The Division of Revenue Bill uses a formula based on poverty levels to allocate funding to the provinces. Davidson said that, while the Western Cape was not one of the poorer provinces, the large numbers of people migrating from other provinces meant that funding should be increased.

The city had a national government allocation of R663 million this year, which would increase to R900m in the next three years.

Davidson said the city’s revised housing plan would include long-term strategies to improve housing. The number of people waiting for houses increased from 117 000 in 2007 to 400 000 in 2009. The demand for shelter would increase by 18 000 to 20 000 each year, Davidson said.

City housing director Hans Smit said the city’s biggest challenge in dealing with the housing backlog was limited funding from the national government. With an allocation of R1 million, the city could provide 40 serviced erven at R25 000 an erf, 10 Breaking New Ground (the houses that have replaced RDP units) houses of 40m2 in size at a cost of R100 000 or eight community residential units or rental flats at a cost of R120 000.

The city was also being pressed to provide emergency housing opportunities because of natural factors, such as flooding. Davidson said the city was working on several land acquisitions for emergency housing, but would not name them for fear of land invasions.

“We need to deal with emergency needs of new arrivals and those who are on the (housing) list.” Some people had been waiting for a house since 1970.

The city would service Greenfields and then settle people on these serviced sites until the area was formally developed.

Smit said the city council would need 10 000 hectares of land to provide the housing opportunities required.

Densification options included multi-storey units in mini-towns, as were seen in Beijing. The city would avoid building 40-storey flats as seen in Hong Kong.

Smit said he was confident the Beijing model would work in South Africa and he wanted Cape Town to be the pilot site.

Davidson said city planners were looking at developing housing along transport routes to Atlantis and along the Klipheuwel/Malmesbury railway route. As district development plans curtailed development in these areas, the expansion of structured development along these routes still needed to be investigated.

anel.lewis@inl.co.za