Kuils River backyarders want the provincial Department of Human Settlements to investigate the way houses were allocated at a state-subsidised housing complex.
They want a breakdown of Breaking New Ground (BNG) houses in Highbury’s Riverside Gardens allocated to Wesbank, Eerster River, Kalkfontein and Sarepta residents.
The first houses were handed over in the complex – formerly known Highbury Phase 3 – in September last year. However, 20 BNG houses are still empty and some Kalkfontein and Sarepta residents on the City’s housing list claim they have not yet received the homes, “promised to them” and fear being excluded from the R54m project.
Steered by Human Settlements, it started in 2014. The developer, Power Development, built 264 BNG houses, 100 military-veteran houses and 100 Finance Linked Individual Subsidy Programme (FLISP) houses for people earning R3 500 and over (“New homes bring joy to the elderly”, Northern News, September 18, 2019).
Sandra de Bruin, 48, of Kalkfontein, said she had been on the City’s housing list for 16 years but had heard at a March 12 meeting there was no house for her at Riverside Gardens and she would have to wait to be “considered” for another project.
Promises to her and her husband had been broken, she claimed.
“Human settlements and Ward 19 councillor Ebrahim Sawant made promises to the people including me, and we were told that the 20 houses will be given to us, but that changed and people from other areas are moving in there. This is unfair.”
She did not want to move to some other project far from her family, she said.
“I have been living in a bungalow for many years, and I don’t want to see my children and grandchildren grow up like this anymore, but my dream of having a home was shattered.”
Kuils River Concerned Citizens Development Forum (KRCCDFP) chairperson Johannes Pula said the Riverside Gardens allocations were “unfair and favoured residents from Wesbank not Kuils River”.
He accused Mr Sawant of giving residents “false hope” by taking down their names and promising to prioritise them for the final 20 houses.
“The KRCCDF wants Human Settlements to provide details of who benefited from this project and who did not.”
The elderly and disabled people were mostly affected and were living in makeshift shacks, he said.
“People who were on the City’s housing list for less than 10 years have benefited from the units at Riverside Gardens, this is unfair.”
However, Mr Sawant denied making promises to residents. They had “assumed that they would be getting houses,” he said.
“Many of the residents did not meet the criteria for the BNG houses, they are either employed or already have homes in the area.”
The final 20 houses had been allocated to residents still due to move in.
“Some other residents who were on the beneficiary list will be receiving houses at other housing projects because we could only accommodate a certain amount of people from certain areas across the metro.” Human Settlements spokesman Marcellino Martin said the department had been “honest and transparent” throughout.
Providing a beneficiary list would compromise residents’ “confidential information”, he said, but noted that 214 of the 264 BNG houses had gone to residents from Kalkfontein, Sarepta and Wesbank, with priority given to those on the waiting list for many years.
“The other 50 housing opportunities were allocated to the departmental priority cases where vulnerable people were sourced throughout the metro.”
Those included Eerste River and Steenvilla in Steenberg.
The final 20 houses had gone to residents from all areas on the beneficiary list. They would move in after repairs had been done to some of the units that been vandalised, he said.