Political interference, red tape and legislation are among the factors slowing the City of Cape Town’s housing projects, mayor Helen Zille said on Wednesday.
Delivery of housing opportunities had been delayed and several causes of this identified, she told the last full council meeting of the year.
A shortage of project managers in the housing department was a major factor.
Although these posts were being filled, it still took time for the administrative process to be completed, Zille said.
”The second is the fact that political interference on the ground is stalling projects.
”This is an unfortunate trend that we are seeing in some of the informal settlements of Cape Town,” she said.
Further, in some cases the city was even struggling to get bidders for housing tenders in informal areas because conditions were so unfavourable — contractors increasingly would not work there.
Zille said implementation of housing was also being slowed down by bureaucratic delay of major projects.
The Scottsdene Show Village, for example, was delayed from November 2006 until November 15 2007 while the city waited for the province to provide permission to subdivide existing erven on correctly zoned land, following only one objection.
”The fact is, bureaucratic processes can either be used to facilitate delivery, or used to block delivery for political purposes.
”Compare the example of Scottsdene to the provincial government’s willingness to fast-track approvals for the Green Point Stadium.
”Compare, also, the speed at which the provincial government moved when it wanted to take over the city’s municipal public transport functions through a public transport operating entity, to their foot-dragging around granting the City of Cape Town housing accreditation,” Zille said.
Legislation also hindered housing delivery.
A major project in Pelican Park, which should yield about 5 500 housing units, was being held up by a combination of environmental impact assessment (EIA) legislation and bureaucratic delays.
Phase one of the project, comprising 3 500 houses, had already received EIA approval many years ago.
However, this approval lapsed under the former city administration, and no houses were built.
”Now we have had to re-apply for an EIA, and we were required to obtain approval for all three phases of the 420ha site,” she said.
This resulted in about six months of delays at provincial level before it was decided that phase one could be de-linked so that it could be started.
”The new EIA legislation may help to speed up approvals for small pieces of land, however, it is no less of a burden for large projects than the laws it replaced.” — Sapa