Reclaim the City and Ndifuna Ukwazi claims City not honest about plans of Cissie Gool House

Housing activists, Reclaim the City and Ndifuna Ukwazi, have accused the City of Cape Town of not being transparent about its plans for the Cissie Gool House.

The municipality is set to start a public participation process for the redevelopment of the Old Woodstock Hospital site, but the City are accused of failing to engage the occupiers about their future.

NU Buhle Booi says those who are occupying the building cannot be sidelined.

‘’[We] are both extremely concerned about the City of Cape Town’s ongoing reluctance to meaningfully engage with the occupiers of Cissie Gool House (Old Woodstock Hospital)…. This cannot constitute any meaningful engagement as the occupiers would have had no say in their fate…Cissie Gool House was occupied in 2017 in protest against the City and Province’s abject failure to deliver a single affordable home in the inner-city and surrounds since the dawn of democracy. Seven years later, it is still true that there has been almost no tangible progress in addressing spatial apartheid. Rather than swinging between criminalising or ignoring the residents of Cissie Gool House, we urge the City to meaningfully engage residents and share information with them so that the best outcome for the people of Cape Town can be found,’’ said Buhle Bood, Head of Political Organising at NU.

‘’Cissie Gool House was first promised as a site for affordable housing in 2008, as were the City’s Pickwick, Salt River Market, Dillon Lane and Pine Road projects. The City still has not broken ground on any of these projects today. Instead of criminalising occupiers and falsely blaming them for the City’s own lack of progress, the City needs to recognize its own mistakes, the constraints it operates under, and that rushing forward to evict 900 people from the only well-located housing for poor and working class people in the central city will do nothing to reverse spatial apartheid. It seems that the City wants to push forward with an eviction at all costs, despite the fact that this would be the biggest inner-city eviction in Cape Town since the height of apartheid. At a time when so many of the mayor’s much publicised projects are struggling to get off the ground, we need to ask whether this approach makes any sense. In fact, the City commissioned a report which said it would be possible to redevelop the site without evicting current residents, while providing more units of housing than the 500 units currently envisioned by the City. The proposals detailed in the report are the clearest and most suitable path forward. Worryingly, the City has chosen to ignore this report completely,’’ he added.

 Mayco Member for Human Settlements, Carl Pophaim announced that the public participation process on the City's proposals for the Woodstock Hospital site will take place between September and October 2024.

‘’Our plans for this site as a mixed use market and affordable housing development will be a game-changer, bringing much-needed affordable housing, and an economic and value boost to this area. The property, with a potential residential development yield of approximately 500 units, comprising open market and social housing, will be released subject to the provision of affordable housing.’’

‘’All due process is being followed in ensuring we progress definitively on this long-awaited development. We look forward to a constructive and meaningful public participation process on this valuable project. My directorate has worked hard against so many obstacles and complexities, including the unlawful occupation and hi-jacking of the building, to move the project toward this point and I will not allow narrow agendas and special interests to derail our efforts to provide accelerated, inclusive affordable housing in well-located areas near the Cape Town CBD as well as other well-located land in the metro's urban centres,’’ added Pophaim.

According to the MMC, the illegal occupation of the Woodstock Hospital site has been the single biggest delay to this development.

‘’This is illegal and to the detriment of a fair and systematic process in subsidised housing allocation. I will not tolerate anyone undermining our affordable housing agenda or holding a fair housing allocations system ransom.’’

‘’The City will conduct engagements with the occupants as part of the broad public participation process to be undertaken for the disposal of the property. The response for the existing occupants will be dependent on the socio-economic profile of the households. The City intends to engage the households on the options available to them to determine the appropriate response for each household in terms of Council policy and legislation,’’ added Carl Pophaim, MMC for Human Settlements.

Done by: Mitchum George