The City of Cape Town Human Settlements team has finished work on a R30 million repair and maintenance programme for Community Residential Units (CRU) in Atlantis.
The repair and maintenance programme includes the replacement of staircases, walkways, and balustrades, among others.
On Thursday, the City’s Mayco member for Human Settlements, Councillor Carl Pophaim, visited projects in Atlantis to inspect their completion as part of his priority programme driving investment in public housing.
“Public housing is a priority programme for me, and we are set to ramp up work over the next few months. Overall, we are driving a R1.2 billion public housing investment programme over the next three years.
“Due to the large demand and volume of rental stock that the city manages, we are focusing on emergency and critical work across rental stock in the metro,” Pophaim said.
Pophaim outlined that the R30 million Atlantis project is an example of the work they are doing across the metro and it has included repairing 79 staircases and replacing damaged walkways with new precast concrete structures, new steel columns, and balustrades.
“Atlantis walkway projects have been budgeted for at a later stage. It has been intricate and labour intensive work, and our teams have really shown great dedication to completing this project.
“The City is one of the biggest landlords in the country, and an estimated 160,000 people currently benefit from the affordable rental public housing units operated by the city,” Pophaim said.
Pophaim also outlined that there are many challenges in public housing; however, he is committed to finding new ways of working and new strategies to see how they can improve the repair and maintenance offerings within the finite resources that they have.
“My big request to our tenants is that if they have any safety concerns regarding their units and staircases, they are encouraged to please contact the Human Settlements Directorate. It can then be investigated and ranked in terms of the seriousness and scope of work required.
“My directorate is here to serve, and we can only build a City of Hope if we work together, facing our challenges head on. Watch this space. We are ready to up our game and enable enhanced living conditions for our tenants,” Pophaim said.
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