- The City of Cape Town’s new draft policy requires evictees to prove they have no alternative housing options to qualify for temporary emergency accommodation.
- The policy follows a 2024 Constitutional Court ruling that deemed the City’s previous emergency housing approach unconstitutional.
- The policy requires people facing eviction to disclose their income, employment status, bank statements and whether family members can assist them before qualifying for emergency shelter.
Facing eviction in Cape Town could soon mean proving you have nowhere else to go.
Under a new draft policy released by the City of Cape Town, residents threatened with displacement will have to disclose their income, employment status, bank statements, and whether relatives can assist them, before qualifying for temporary emergency accommodation.
The policy follows a 2024 Constitutional Court ruling, which found the City’s implementation of the National Housing Programme unconstitutional and ordered it to adopt its own temporary emergency accommodation policy.
The judgment marked the end of a lengthy legal battle between the City and former residents of Bromwell Street in Woodstock.
The residents were evicted in 2016 after private developers bought their homes as part of the suburb’s gentrification. Unable to afford alternative accommodation nearby, they challenged the City’s offer of emergency housing several kilometres away.
The City had argued it had no emergency housing in the inner city due to high land costs.
In 2021, the Western Cape High Court ruled in favour of the residents, declaring the City’s emergency housing programme unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of Appeal later overturned that decision.
The apex court ultimately reinstated key findings, holding that the City had “unreasonably failed to adopt its own temporary emergency accommodation policy to be implemented in conjunction with the National Emergency Housing Programme”.
The City’s draft “Temporary Emergency Accommodation Policy: Responding to Evictions” is open for public comment.
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Under the proposed framework, evictees must complete a “personal circumstances questionnaire” detailing their household composition, employment and income.
The policy states that applicants must disclose their employment status, including household income, as well as all sources of income/grants and expenditure.
They must also provide income and residential address/es of immediate family members not residing with the affected person(s).
To verify this information, the City may require certified ID copies, payslips, three months’ bank statements, proof of grants and documentation relating to disability status.
The City says it “will consider the legal and practical availability of support from immediate family members not residing with affected person(s), in line with the reciprocal duty of support established under South African law”.
However, it “shall not deny temporary emergency accommodation assistance solely on the basis of potential family support”.
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Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements Carl Pophaim said one of the reasons why an evictee could be denied temporary emergency accommodation was if they could house themselves upon eviction, as they had sufficient income or means by which to secure alternative accommodation through their own means or through family, friends or support networks, and would therefore not be rendered homeless if evicted.
“The threshold for state-supported accommodation is to ensure that a person will not be rendered homeless on an eviction. Each offer of temporary emergency accommodation is made on a case-by-case basis after personal engagement with the evictee so as to assess their capacity to ensure they will not be rendered homeless on an eviction, and this includes an assessment of employment, salary, and family,” Pophaim added.
Evictees are entitled to refuse offers of alternative accommodation.
The draft policy makes clear that emergency accommodation is not intended as a long-term housing solution.
Available options include housing kits, temporary relocation units (TRUs), safe spaces, and short-term shelter placements.
In the case of TRUs, the policy specifies: “This accommodation will be made available for a period of five years to enable affected persons sufficient time to secure alternative accommodation.”
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The document also states that shelters and materials provided “shall always remain the property of the City and are intended for reuse”, and that sub-letting is “strictly prohibited”.
Beneficiaries allocated permanent housing must relinquish emergency structures, failing which “they will be denied the permanent house/serviced plot”.
While the policy formalises how the City will respond to eviction cases, it repeatedly emphasises funding constraints and dependence on national government.
It notes that the centralisation of emergency housing funding under the Emergency Housing Grant, which is restricted to declared disasters, “has left municipalities, including the City, unable to fund emergency accommodation for evictees, making it an unfunded mandate”.
The City said it could not provide emergency accommodation to all households facing eviction proceedings without support from other spheres of government.
Pophaim said municipalities relied on national grant funding for housing delivery.
“The delivery of all housing by municipalities is funded from the national fiscus by way of grant funding. Some years ago, the national government cited to terminate the provision of grant funding for emergency accommodation which arises out of evictions, despite it being a programme under the [National Housing] Code and as such no funding for this purpose is currently provided to municipalities,” he added.
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“The City has lobbied for this position to be reconsidered, given the extent of private evictions which the City faces currently, and we understand that the national Department of Human Settlements is in the process of considering amendments to the grant funding structure in this regard.”
Yusrah Bardien, communications and engagements officer at Ndifuna Ukwazi, said the policy risked entrenching displacement.
“One of our concerns is that the outcome of the City’s proposed policy will formalise displacement and informality. While the City repeatedly states budgetary constraints to justify its limited offerings, this excuse is cold comfort for the thousands who will suffer its shortcomings,” she added.
“Following an eviction that leaves a tenant homeless, the municipality is legally required to provide alternative accommodation to prevent homelessness.
“The Constitutional Court, in the Bromwell matter, directed the City to develop a reasonable Temporary Emergency Accommodation Policy, aligned with the National Emergency Housing Programme, as there is no other current housing programme funding that could be used for evictions.”
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Bardien said that, in real terms, the policy may leave evictees with little more than basic building materials.
“In practice, the City’s proposed policy, in its current form, means offering evictees little more than poles and sheets of metal to erect shelter on vacant land they must locate and secure permission from private landowners to use.
“We have yet to see any evicted person achieve this in reality. As an alternative, the City offers its Safe Space shelters or other shelter options. But shelters are not designed to cater to evictees with household possessions, but rather to those experiencing temporary homelessness.”
