City once again delays the development of affordable housing on the Green Point Bowling Green

The City of Cape Town has repeatedly stated its commitment to using the exceptionally well-located Green Point Bowling Green as a site for affordable and mixed-income housing. Despite this, the City is once again leasing the site out for roughly R3,000 per year for exclusive uses that provide no benefit to the wider Cape Town population, or indeed the City itself. The ongoing approach to the Bowling Green and other well-located pieces of public land demonstrates a worrying lack of vision and urgency.?

The resistance to well-located affordable housing will disadvantage both the people in Cape Town and the municipality itself. Head of Organising at NU, Buhle Booi said:

If the City followed through on its commitment to develop the site as planned, it would not only provide desperately needed well-located affordable housing, it would generate additional municipal revenue in the form of rates, and improve the financial and environmental sustainability of the City, by increasing densification. The City is not only passing up a golden opportunity to build a fairer Cape Town, but it is also losing out on millions of Rands every year in potential rates revenue by delaying the development of the Bowling Green for mixed income housing, in light of the fiscal dent made by the COVID-19 pandemic

Attorney Jonty Cogger of Ndifuna Ukwazi expanded on the Constitutional rights underpinning the organisations objection to the renewed lease:

Public land should be used for public benefit. In the context of our profound housing crises, it is immensely frustrating to see the City either renege on or once again delay its plans to develop the site into affordable and mixed-income housing. The City spent a considerable amount of money getting consultants to develop plans for the site to be developed for mixed-use housing, and yet these plans have been gathering dust in a filing cabinet in the Civic Centre for several years now.?

If the City intends to lease out this land, it needs to follow through on its commitment and provide a clear and implementable plan for how the site will be inclusively developed as a matter of urgency.?

Send your objection to this lease renewal by 7 November to:

• Ms Ruby Gelderbloem: [email protected] [Economic Opportunity & Asset Management Department, City of Cape Town]
• For attention: Ms Hazel Davids: [email protected] [Economic Opportunity & Asset Management Department, City of Cape Town]

For more information: https://nu.org.za/city-once-again-delays-the-development-of-affordable-housing-on-the-green-point-bowling-green/

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCuVDqcT4Ho