The City of Cape Town is set to release its sixth inner-city property for social housing development, a 9 000m2 New Market Street property in Woodstock that will yield 375 social housing units, cross subsidised by retail space, and over 350 open market residential units.
The original feasibility study for the 9 000m2 property envisaged only 200 social housing units as part of a mixed-use development.
To date, the municipality has released central Cape Town land parcels with an estimated yield of over 4 900 affordable housing units including 2 100 social housing units. Sites include New Market Street, Pine Road, Dillon Lane, and Pickwick in Woodstock, in addition to the Salt River Market and the now tenanted Maitland Mews Development, with more in the pipeline.
“In total, city-wide, we have over 6 500 social housing units at various stages of the planning pipeline across 50 well-located parcels of land. These units will be a real game changer for qualifying residents who earn less than R22 000 a month,” comments Councillor Carl Pophaim, Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements.
“We estimate that around 100 000 social housing opportunities are possible at sites such as Wingfield, Youngsfield, Ysterplaat and the Parliamentary Village. I hope that the national winds of change will blow in a fresh urgency to the release of some of the mega-properties owned by the national government throughout our metro,” says Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
