Cape Town’s torment of homeless people achieves new heights of lunacy

19 October 2021

STEP 1: PASS NEW BY-LAW MAKING IT ILLEGAL TO LIVE ON THE STREETS
STEP 2: EVICT HOMELESS PEOPLE FROM “SAFE-SPACE” BACK TO THE STREETS
STEP 3: ARREST HOMELESS PEOPLE FOR BEING ON THE STREETS

The City of Cape Town has authored a cruel and unusual cycle of torment for homeless people which effectively hinges on harassing them from the streets of more affluent areas.

In a new twist to its strategy, the City’s service provider – Matdoc – is serving eviction notices on homeless people who accepted a “safe” sleeping place in one of the City of Cape Town’s three “safe spaces”. (GOOD had to resort to a PAIA application to reveal Matdoc’s identity after questions posed in the Provincial Legislature went unanswered.)

The proposed evictions follow close on the heels of the City passing a new by-law making it illegal for people to live on the streets. The by-law is similar to the old vagrancy laws used to move people apartheid authorities deemed undesirable from sight.

Homeless people who received eviction orders reached out to GOOD Ward Councillor Candidate and homelessness activist, Carlos Mesquita.

“They wanted to alert me to their imminent eviction. The City’s strategy amounts to repulsive social engineering. It is beyond cynical to force people out of the safe space and back to live on the streets, having just adopted a by-law that makes it illegal to be homeless on the streets. It is heartless.”

The City, in its wisdom, has decided that homeless people only require a safe space for six months after which they are deemed ready to leave regardless of whether they have received the necessary social support or have anywhere else to go.

“The City’s actions will never resolve homelessness,” said Mesquita. “A war on the homeless is unwinnable. No number of fines, warnings or impounding of their possessions will resolve the plethora of reasons behind each of the estimated 14 000 people who live homeless on the streets."

“To address homelessness we must start by providing permanent transitional accommodation that caters for the structure of the homeless family unit – whether it be a single person or a family. Together with safe accommodation, those who are homeless need to be provided with services to assist them to find their way back to the life, off the streets, that they want to lead.”

Brett Herron, the GOOD Mayoral Candidate for the City of Cape Town, said: “Just about all cities in the world have programmes to support people who feel compelled to live on the streets. Instead of following established best practise, Cape Town’s response is almost medieval.”

Herron said Cape Town had failed to learn from the expensive mistake of its Strandfontein concentration camp for homeless people, established last year during the first Covid lockdown. The safe spaces it provided thereafter were not transitional facilities, where residents are exposed to services before moving on. They merely provided designated places for homeless people to sleep at night.

"The idea that after living in the same place for six months homeless people are ready to resume their lives off the streets is arbitrary, cruel and naïve", Herron said.

Issued by Fiona Furey, Communications Director: City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate, 19 October 2021