The City is making slow but steady progress on Cape Town’s homelessness crisis

Every day, Capetonians contact me or ask me questions in public meetings about the issue of homelessness. I know it is on the minds of many.

While I have spoken about our approach to homelessness often (see here, here, here and here), I thought it would be helpful to summarise our progress thus far in one place, and set out the steps ahead.

Over the initial months of the Covid-19 lockdowns, Cape Town, like many cities across the world, experienced an explosion in the number of people living in public spaces.

Justifiably, Capetonians have been asking what we, the City, are doing about the loss of public space and its effects on surrounding communities.

While our policies on homelessness have already been well publicised, they can be summarised as follows: a shift to care interventions and the provision of dignified alternative accommodation designed to help the homeless off the streets, with the clear understanding that even if this help is rebuffed, we must act to keep public spaces open, clean and safe.

First, though, I’d like to explain my understanding of the socioeconomic, legal and moral contexts in which these policies have been formed.

The challenges

The causes of Cape Town’s homelessness epidemic are multifaceted. Most relevantly, a tragic number of Capetonians were driven onto the streets by the socioeconomic devastation of the (indefensibly restrictive) Covid-19 lockdowns.

Thousands of Capetonians – most in economic distress, many addicted to drugs and suffering from mental illness, and a smaller number seeking easier access to opportunities for crime – moved into parks, playgrounds and road reserves and under bridge flyovers.

Coupled with this were national lockdown regulations which restricted almost any form of eviction action by landowners, including the state. Ironically, this prohibition was only ever enforced against the state – many of those now homeless were illegally evicted from their previous private accommodation when they lost their jobs during lockdown.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-07-10-cape-town-mayor-hill-lewis-wants-to-shift-approach-on-homelessness-from-law-enforcement-to-care-intervention/

While evictions can now legally be sought again, it is important for every resident to understand that no person may ever be removed without an eviction order granted by the high court.

And when seeking eviction orders against unlawful occupants of public land, the City is required by law to provide people with alternative accommodation at public cost.

The number of homeless persons currently occupying public land in Cape Town makes it simply impossible, financially and practically, for the City to give everyone who needs one a house and a livelihood. Unfortunately, the national government has shown little interest in helping to solve the problem, either through housing delivery or through policies which support the economic growth and employment necessary for people to escape poverty.

None of this is sustainable. No major city can succeed if its public spaces – parks, roads, road reserves, heritage buildings, playgrounds and walkways – are under constant threat of loss with no legal means of recovery. No small business can succeed if its shopfront is a public latrine. 

And it is not a morally sustainable situation for an increasing number of persons – people who are our literal and figurative neighbours – to be living in unsafe and undignified conditions on the streets.

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The availability of land and housing opportunities is not the only challenge. A large proportion of Capetonians living in the public spaces suffer from mental or societal afflictions, including addiction, depression, psychosis, trauma, or familial abuse. They require the intervention of welfare services as well as emergency accommodation of some sort.

The City does not have the constitutional mandate, nor the funding from the national fiscus, to provide welfare services. Regardless, we now face the real prospect that, without the delivery of such services, the persons we seek to relocate from public space have very little prospect of proper integration into society even when accommodation can be offered.

The City’s approach

In my view, no person should be living on the streets. It is unsafe, undignified and unhealthy for them and for all those working and living around them as well.

Our approach to homelessness tries to balance two needs without forcing a trade-off between them: to protect public spaces and prevent urban decay, and promote the dignity of homeless people by helping them off the streets.

The City of Cape Town’s Care Programme

The sum and substance of the City’s approach to homelessness is about caring – caring about the dignity of our homeless residents, caring about the issues that led them to the streets in the first place, and caring about their futures. Practically, this translates into our Care Programme, on which we will spend R77-million this year alone. The programme involves the input and intervention of social workers to assess and address physical and psychological needs, as well as offering each homeless person access to dignified accommodation in Safe Spaces.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-03-24-cape-town-suburb-employs-new-approach-to-tackling-homelessness/

Safe Spaces offer the homeless dignified, comfortable and safe basic shelter, clean ablution facilities, two meals per day, access to social workers and health workers, addiction treatment, and services that facilitate personal development and promote employability. The programme aims to reintegrate homeless residents into formal society or reunite them with their families, usually within a target period of six months.

Over the next three years we aim to invest at least R140-million into expanding and operating City-run Safe Spaces beyond the current CBD and Bellville sites. We will also expand the operations of aspects of the programme that address homelessness holistically, including family reunification, assistance with ID documents and social grants, access to job opportunities, referral to mental health services, and improved access to the highly successful Matrix substance abuse rehabilitation programme.

This is, of course, in addition to the incredible work being done by many helpful NGOs in Cape Town. We have clear plans to build on partnerships with those NGOs who help to address homelessness, as well as doing more to work together with the provincial and national governments, which together hold the constitutional mandate for welfare and homeless shelters.

Protecting public space

While our interventions are led by this Care Programme, the desired outcome is clear: people reintegrated off the streets and public spaces that remain open and available to all. These public spaces serve important social, community and economic purposes, and must be available for the benefit of the public in general.

No person has the right to reserve a public space as exclusively theirs. This is especially so if they refuse offers of shelter and social assistance, which unfortunately is often the case.

We are therefore developing a legal framework which will allow the City to obtain court orders for the eviction of people living in public spaces where alternative accommodation and other forms of care have been offered but refused.

It is crucial that we win the support of the courts for this approach, as the only alternative is the permanent loss of public amenities and deterioration of public spaces, while homeless people remain where they are, unassisted.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-08-cape-town-charity-feeding-citys-homeless-for-over-80-years-seeing-record-numbers-amid-lockdown/

We expect that our efforts will be opposed by various activist groups who litigate to stop any legal action by the City, but who do not themselves provide any alternative ideas (nor indeed their own resources) for how to make meaningful progress in getting people off the streets. While I assume their motives are well-meaning, they are misguided, and the effect of their efforts is clear for all to see in burgeoning tented camps on the streets of Cape Town.

Finally, we are asking the public to help us promote sustainable solutions. Through our Give Dignity campaign, we are calling on Capetonians to donate to our NGO partners who are working hard to offer meaningful help for people to get off the streets.

Together, we can ensure that Cape Town remains open and safe for business, tourism, social and recreational activities while approaching our homeless residents with caring and respect.

This, I believe, is a goal that we can all get behind, regardless of our individual political orientations. DM