Woodstock & Salt River
Since 2015 DAG has actively facilitated inclusive neighbourhood regeneration in gentrifying inner-city neighbourhoods like Woodstock and Salt River. Through both neighbourhood and site-specific facilitation we have worked to unlock state-owned land for the delivery of well-located affordable and social housing.
In 2017, the City of Cape Town scheduled the release of 11 city-owned parcels of land for social and affordable housing in Woodstock and Salt River. Later, in 2019, the first transitional housing project in Cape Town was built in Salt River to house the families that had been living informally on the Pine Road social housing site.
By the end of 2023, following extensive internal City processes, four social housing sites were in advanced planning stages. This included: the Pickwick Mixed Market site, the James Street site, the New Market site and the Salt River Market site.
At a neighbourhood scale, DAG facilitated a community engagement and participation process in which the City of Cape Town committed to “a new way of engaging”. This commitment from the city was prompted by a DAG-facilitated civil society dialogue on a community-centred approach to regeneration. This resulted in a neighbourhood development forum being established which oversees issues pertaining to social housing and neighbourhood development.
Since 2015, DAG has provided support to the residents currently living in settlements on these earmarked sites to ensure that any relocation of these residents is socially just and people centred.
Lastly, this project’s extensive work also includes education around transitional housing through learning tours with partnering organisations, advocacy around social housing, and monitoring the progress of planned affordable housing developments.
What we do
DAG has worked closely with the informal settlement residents living on two of the sites earmarked for social housing. DAG’s role has been to support the residents to ensure the relocation plan reflects their needs and aligns with the principles of spatial justice and equality.
Transitional Housing and socially just relocations
At a social housing site-specific level, DAG provides support to local citizens and community leaders to engage in a participatory way with Social Housing Institutions and affordable housing developers around development proposals. This includes both mandatory and voluntary public participation processes for the following social housing projects: Pine Road, Dillon Lane, Salt River Market and Pickwick – all of which are in the detailed stages of planning.
Social Facilitation – Social Housing
DAG facilitates local and national dialogues on the lessons learnt, supplemented with research, and policy submissions in order to scale- up the lessons learnt from our work in Woodstock & Salt River to influence and inform policy makers and local government on improved urban land release for social and affordable housing as a means to enable spatial transformation.
Learning Forums
Impact
In 2019, the first Transitional Housing facility was built in Salt River for the families being relocated from the Pine Road site, which is currently earmarked for 240 social housing units.
Most Significant Change Story
DAG’s advocacy work places affordable housing at the top of the mayor’s priority list
In 2022, DAG’s extensive advocacy work on the release of well-located under-utilised public land for social and affordable housing began to yield significant results. These results stemmed from the 2021 local government election campaign, which was characterised by political debates about affordable housing and spatial planning in the City of Cape Town. During the local government election campaign period, the newly elected mayor made overt promises to use public land, including city land, to address spatial justice issues. Civil society organisations were uncertain at the time whether this was simply political rhetoric.
In January 2022, in an address by Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis he announced that one of the six Mayoral Priority Areas would be Increasing access to housing – releasing City-owned land so the private sector is able deliver more affordable housing. This was further emphasised during the announcement of the City’s Rapid Land Release Programme which would see the release of nine parcels of well-located city land being released for social and affordable housing, including in areas within the inner city, Woodstock & Salt River and Parow, which will yield about 4000 housing opportunities.
Publications
project Partners
