From the news desk

City moves homeless people, but not without criticism

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As citizens are repeatedly encouraged to remain indoors for the remaining 16 days of South Africa’s nationwide lockdown, concerns continue for those who don’t have a home to go to. In Cape Town alone there are still thousands of homeless who require protection from the coronavirus pandemic.

The statistics are a stark reality of how threatening the virus is to those roaming around, with many criticizing the City’s efforts. On social media, images of the city’s temporary shelter sites and tents sparked anger, with many arguing that the City could have housed the homeless in vacant venues, such as civic halls or schools.

According to Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health, Zahid Badroodien, 2018 inventory revealed that there are an estimated 6000 homeless people in with 2000 who access shelter.

Speaking to VOC news on Tuesday, Badroodien said that there are two processes underway to assist the remaining 4000.

“On the one hand, they’ve identified a number of facilities across the City that we’ve opened. The first one being this past Saturday In the CBD and another one in Bellville that will be opening up in the next few days, then in Somerset West and a number of other areas as well,” he said.

According to Badroodien, Cape Town mayor Dan Plato and MEC for Public works and infrastructure Patricia de Lille accompanied the City to identify potential “suitable” accommodation sites.

“This week we’re currently working on what we’re calling a ‘holding space’, where we’re able to take on a large number of individuals to assist them through the various stages in terms of housing and other services they may require,” he explained.

He further noted that the experience gained through previous interventions has allowed them to better prepare for the current situation. This included how to handle the destitute who are addicted to drugs.

“Very importantly, the lessons we took away from the second safe space that we’ve opened is that here we have a lot of individuals that have previously not accessed -potentially- the social developmental interventions and these are people who are going through various stages of withdrawal,” he said.

“On Saturday alone, we had taken in about 50 individuals who, on their admission, were on heroin and required either the treatment by methadone or the heroin itself. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is that slowly over time, these individuals jump over the fence and make their way back into their communities.

Badroodien explained that the Safe Space that has been operating in the Cape Town CBD for two years offers all the necessary facilities such as water, sanitation facilities (such as toilets and showers), as well as temporary sleeping areas. However, the sudden announcement of a lockdown gave the City little time to adequately prepare.

“We would ideally like to have mimicked for the current site we are using for the safe space but unfortunately as you can imagine, three days is not enough to be able to do all that work. The space we’re using is within the CBD, it has access to drinkable water, toilets, to showers,” he said.

“We’ve been seeing the unhappiness on social media recently, to say how can we put the people in tents. But with the time that we’ve had, tents were the only option available to put people in some form of shelter, which in this case in three days is much better than nothing.”

“I’m hoping the residents understand that because as we bring our hard facilities online, the buildings that we’ve currently preparing, it means that we can move these individuals over into these locations.”

Badroodien also declined suggestions of housing the homeless in existing structures that already have facilities, saying that some are leased out.

“The Goodhope Centre is currently being leased out to an organisation, so that facility is not available to the City any longer. Initially, in the plans, I presented to the mayoral committee and executive management team of the City, we had taken a number of large facilities into consideration,” he said.

Referring to the City’s efforts to take in refugees during the xenophobic attacks which broke out in 2008; Badroodien said that those individuals caused R200 million worth of damage and repeating that move is too much of a risk.

“What we’re looking at is that the unfortunate chance that this might happen at a number of facilities like schools, halls, sporting facilities that still need to be used after the lockdown. We’re very aware of that reality because that does remain a risk,” he stated.

Badroodien explained that the City is seeking long-term solutions.

“Even though we’d love to be able to accommodate these individuals in facilities, the risk of people remaining in these areas is a real one. Which means that these facilities then aren’t usable in the long term,” he said.

“This model in terms of a holding area and then further (move) into other areas is being adopted in Durban and Johannesburg, so we can find people more permanent long term solutions instead of putting them into a school hall that they will have to leave anyway,” he added.

The number of infections in the country rose to 1326 by Monday evening and the virus claimed another life in the Free State, bringing the death toll to 3. Apart from having the countries first confirmed death as a result of the virus, the Western Cape has a total of 324 infections.

On Sunday, the provincial government released a statement detailing the areas which host infections and revealed that the City had 256 of the then 310 cases. This amounts to 82.5% of cases in the province.

VOC


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