FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 20 August 2025
The Cape Town inner-city homelessness crisis is still characterised by the continued displacement, and an increase of fenced off public spaces. These makeshift measures do not address the systemic problem, that is a critical lack of well-located, affordable housing with security of tenure.
Eviction processes compel the municipality to provide alternative accommodation in the event the evictee would face homelessness. Properly applied, this approach should break and prevent cycles of homelessness, but this is not what is happening: Why?
The City of Cape Town’s primary offering of alternative accommodation in the inner-city is its ‘Safe Space’ shelters: these spaces can only offer limited periods of shelter, and the accompanying development process, managed by the City’s Department of Social Development offers little to no prospect of transitional, longer term or permanent affordable accommodation in the CBD thus forcing the person to re-occupy streets or abandoned buildings.
The failure to provide adequate alternative accommodation in the city is exemplified by the occupations at Irene Grootboom House in the CBD and Elwyn Court in Vredehoek—both buildings were neglected and abandoned by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure and are now facing eviction into a limited time in safe spaces and ultimately homelessness with no clear alternative accommodation and path toward stable independent living. There is no clear follow-up on the botched High Court eviction applications filed earlier this year, compounding the uncertainty for those living there.
Queenie Mbolo who lives in Elwyn Court says:
It’s not a good thing to be evicted, we made that place our home and it wasn’t easy to make it our home. We fixed a place that was neglected for some years and then all of sudden they told us we must go. Now we are staying near our kids’ schools and jobs, and it is even convenient for us to call an ambulance, it comes quickly. There are cameras all over and we feel it makes it safer for us.
We stand in solidarity with other unhoused communities in the city, we are saying no displacement, and they must stop repeating what we have done already in these occupations. We are on them, it is our alternative spaces, our alternative houses and homes already. Stop Evictions. Amandla!
Lorenzo Johnson, a political organiser at Ndifuna Ukwazi says:
The protest taking place today on the 20th of August 2025, is to make a call for meaningful engagement in finding decent, adequate housing or traditional housing options with a focus on human development. The Safe Spaces and others are already overcapacitated, despite the different challenges on how it is run. As to why people prefer to make their own home on vacant land or empty buildings: The unhoused communities know their needs. They are the experts when it comes to being unhoused, Governments have a responsibility to consult with the people who are facing evictions, and so ‘nothing about us without us’ is how the community of the unhoused feels. So we are calling on the government to engage and to speak to us to co-create solutions with the people.
The protest taking place today (20 August 2025) is a collection of people from Salt River, Woodstock and the inner-city will be calling for meaningful engagement from the City of Cape Town’s Department of Social Development, in finding dignified housing that has an honest focus on human development.
This weekend Ndifuna Ukwazi and partners will host the Urban Land Justice Gathering at the Waterfront, on 22 and 23 August to raise a discussion on the value of land redistribution, and how it would relieve the state of the urban land and housing crisis.
Read more:
DARLING STREET RESIDENTS FIGHT UNFAIR EVICTION FROM MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS
