Cape Town’s housing developments are being stymied because there is a shortage of land in the city and the council says it would have to pay at least R2-billion to buy the state-owned land that the government has refused to sell.
A city official claims that the council has been negotiating with the Department of Defence and the Military Veterans to buy Wingfield land for the past 15 years and these negotiations have amounted to nothing.
Jens Kuhn, manager for housing land and forward planning in the Cape Town council, says that if 400 000 people need to be housed on small plots of 100 sq m each then the city would need at least 4 000 hectares of land to accommodate them.
Kuhn says that land at Wingfield and Youngsfield had been earmarked for housing development and were registered with the Housing Development Agency. Wingfield is about 195 hectares in extent and Youngsfield is 60 hectares.
He says that both pieces of land are well located, but because of the delays in getting the state to release the land for development, prices are rising and pushing the costs of building affordable homes higher and higher.
Meanwhile MEC for Human Settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela, says that the higher prices demanded for land are justified and says that the city must pay the asking price.
He claims the city has enough land to allow it to spend its annual budget on building new townships for the next three years. According to Madikizela’s spokesman, Bruce Oom, the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements has made 300 hectares of land available to the city, but the planning process for new developments must still be completed.
He says the land at Youngsfield and Wingfield is suitably located for commercial and residential developments for a range of income groups and if the City of Cape Town wants to use that land then they must buy it at its market value.
Earlier this week Wayne Muller, the city’s housing finance manager said that the asking price of R1-million a hectare for unserviced, state-owned land was far too high and more expensive than anywhere else in the country.
Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now.
It’s a never ending story. The backlog number was quoted by Mayor Dan Plato and Premier Helen Zille as 400,000 in 2008/09 and growing. What is the official figure now? Accept for the moment 400,000. This divided into 100m2 plots gives a 4000hectare requirement – brilliant deduction! What about roads, parks, communal facilities etc? Since when does every person have to have a plot? The answer is surely in logical, well planned and well managed densification? And the processes required to make development land available require radical review. In my opinion, National Government, Provincial Government and Local Government cannot and will not succeed without engaging with and involving the Private Sector. And to do this, it has to feasible and viable for the Private Sector to become involved. How many of the land parcels made available by the City of Cape Town with the banks in 2009 have actually been developed? And if they have not, why not? The recent Pelican Park RFP places around 4000 units on 80hectares. Given roads, some commercial, school etc, this puts density at around 60 units/hectare.
It’s a no-brainer! - Peter Grobbelaar
Print
