The City of Cape Town hopes to complete the construction of 1 005 serviced sites for its Gugulethu/Nyanga Infill Housing Project soon, which will make way for the construction of subsidised housing units.

The Gugulethu/Nyanga housing project comprises the development of two large vacant sites along Govan Mbeki (Lansdowne) Road.

The installation of civil engineering services is expected to be completed by mid-May 2016. Erf 8448 in Gugulethu will yield 571 housing opportunities, while Erf 2849 Mau Mau in Nyanga will yield 434 housing opportunities.

“This has been a challenging project with many delays that were caused by intense community dynamics. It is therefore quite a feat that we are nearing this milestone. I thank all of our partners and stakeholders, as well as the community, for working with us so that we could make progress possible.

“The Gugulethu/Nyanga housing project is now at a point where consultation on the beneficiary identification process has started, which will pave the way for the top-structure tender process to commence,” says Benedicta van Minnen, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements.

The consultative beneficiary identification process

Presentations have been made to the Project Steering Committee, sub councils and the affected communities regarding the Allocation Policy and the beneficiary identification process.

Importantly, the proposals must match the Policy and the community expectations in Gugulethu, Nyanga and New Crossroads.

Following the consultative beneficiary identification process, the names on the City’s Housing Database, as per the oldest application dates of the qualifying beneficiaries, will be drawn from the respective suburbs of Gugulethu, Nyanga and New Crossroads and made available for public scrutiny to ensure transparency.

Once this has been completed, a final beneficiary list will be made available to the respective communities.

It is estimated that the construction of the 1 005 housing units will commence in February 2017 and that it will take approximately three years to complete, if all goes according to plan