Nudity, sex and drug use in public, heaps of rubbish and fires are what residents of a building called The Six in District six in Cape Town say they are faced with. That’s as many homeless people live next to the residents’ apartments on vacant land, the subject of an unfinalised land claim.
But activists argue that homelessness cannot be criminalised in courts. The inconvenience of the homeless was detailed in court papers as desperate residents turned to the legal system, arguing their constitutional right to a healthy environment was undermined by the neighbouring street people.
The residents’ plight is echoed across the city as the number of homeless increases and efforts to solve the problem by the City of Cape Town become hamstrung by a multitude of court cases, budget constraints and homeless people’s dislike of restrictive shelters.
The city says the number of homeless living on the streets and pavements is rising due to a “complex interaction of factors”, which include increasing poverty, mental health issues, strained family relationships and escalating substance abuse, with heroin addiction being singled out.
The city admits that the influx of people living on pavements and parking lots is bad for pedestrians and residents and it drives businesses away. “These consequences undermine and, in many instances, frustrate the city’s poverty alleviation.”
Homelessness is, however, extremely difficult to resolve, both the city and activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi concede.
The court case of The Six is what Ndifuna Ukwazi lawyer Johnny Cogger calls a “microcosm” of the same issue playing out over and over.
The body corporate of The Six had complained for years to the city about noise and harassment by squatters underneath their building with no success. When they turned to the courts, they were forced to admit they didn’t have the legal standing to ask the city to evict residents from city property.
The case, was further complicated by the fact the area is part of a land claim and has national government involvement.
At the end of April, the Cape Town High Court ordered the city to enforce its own bylaws to prevent fire hazards, accumulation of human and other waste and environmental degradation on the site, until such time as land claims are finalised or it seeks an eviction order.
It is unlikely to change too much for the residents, and the Six body corporate declined an interview through their lawyer, Martin Bey.
Cogger, who has been involved in separate court action on behalf of some of the homeless in District Six, argues it is not sustainable for residents to use the criminal justice system to deal with the complex “socioeconomic and mental health issue of homelessness”.
“I definitely sympathise with the residents of The Six. No-one wants homelessness on their doorstep.”
But treating people as criminals for making fires, having sex or going to the bathroom outdoors when there are no facilities is criminalising them for being human, argues Cogger.
Other residents take a different approach to the growing problem. Greater Tableview Forum chair Karen Davis said every two weeks Tableview residents clean up after people living on sidewalks.
She says “the illegal squatters bother everybody.”
“We have engaged our councillors and we’ve engaged the city. From what we understand there’s not much that can be done.”
Tableview residents have asked that a city shelter be set up called a Safe Space. But she worries those people using drugs will decline to stay in a shelter that enforces strict rules — if one is provided.
The city, for its part, is increasing the number of beds in shelters to 750 in the CBD, and lifting the number of shelter beds in some affected suburbs,
The city told Business Day it had budgeted R230m over the next three years to operate and expand its Safe Space transitional shelters, a 62% increase over the previous three-year budget cycle. In total, the city’s street people programme budget amounts to R94.75m for 2023/24.
It prefers to offer shelters rather than permanent housing as it is a more cost-effective solution aimed at the reintegration and rehabilitation of the affected persons, it says. When a person is reintegrated, the shelter then has space for someone else, making it more sustainable.
But on top of homelessness, the city faces what it calls land invasions, and it cannot afford to offer housing to those involved.
However, if it “emergency accommodation is more often than not a condition applied by our courts to any eviction order sought against unlawful land occupants by the city”.
“The large scale, sometimes orchestrated, invasion of vacant city-owned land by persons who are doing so to ensure the early receipt of housing assistance from the state, has become wide-scale.”
When the city tries to evict the homeless, as it tried to do in April in the areas of the CBD that are tourist and business hotspots — it must show it has offered accommodation repeatedly and was rebuffed.
Even then an eviction order is hard to secure. It managed to win a temporary eviction order in February to clear people living on Buitengracht Street, FW De Klerk Boulevard, Foregate Square, Taxi Rank and Foreshore, Helen Suzman Boulevard, Strand Street and the Foreshore.
When it went to get a final interdict in April, the city was thwarted by a last-minute application by the Socio Economic Rights Institute (Seri), which had case postponed to October.
The city said it was very disappointed by the late opposition. Its hands are tied by court activists, the need to provide accommodation and the dislike of shelters by some homeless.
Cogger says some of his clients have lived in different shelters for the six-month maximum period, and end up back on the street as their time runs out. It is not a sustainable solution.
The city says accepting social assistance to get off the streets is the best choice for dignity, health, and wellbeing. But for now it is fighting a losing battle.
“With the homelessness, everyone loses, the homeless and [city] residents,” Cogger says.
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