Cape Town housing crisis reaches new heights
Cape Town housing crisis reaches new heights Cape Town is a city where hundreds of thousands of people do not have proper homes and have little prospect of getting them, the Western Cape government says.They are young, unemployed and poor, and the situation is worse by the year, according to the province's housing plan, presented to the legislature's housing portfolio committee on Tuesday.Some of the shocking points which emerged from housing applications were: With an annual growth rate of only one percent, the city's housing backlog was expected to reach 460 000 by 2020. 'We do not want to create an impression there is an absolute lack of capacity' If R1-billion was spent every year on building houses, the demand for formal housing would only be met by 2033. If R500-million was spent annually, the demand for site and services only would be met by 2017. Fifty-one percent of applicants lived in shacks, 31 percent in backyards and 12 percent shared homes with other p