The City is trying to move them to its Safe Spaces, but lawyers argue they deny people their rights to privacy, dignity, and freedom of movement.
An attempt to evict dozens of people living in and around Hope Street Park in lower Gardens is before the High Court, with the park occupiers arguing the City’s Safe Spaces are not suitable as alternative accommodation.
The people living in the park and surrounds are clients of housing rights organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi, who is representing them as respondents to the City’s eviction application.
Ndifuna Ukwazi attorney Inga Dyantyi said the City filed an application for an eviction order for Hope Street Park and surrounds on 1 July last year.
Dyantyi said Ndifuna Ukwazi filed a counter-application stating that the City needs to provide alternative accommodation to the people it intends to move out the park and off the surrounding streets, in accordance with the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Illegal Occupation of Land Act.
She said the City argued they will move the people to its Safe Spaces, but Ndifuna Ukwazi argues these do not constitute suitable accommodation, due to Safe Space rules which do not uphold people’s constitutional rights to dignity and freedom of movement.
The Safe Space sites locked people out at 8am and only allowed them back at 5pm. “This is their accommodation, they are not children,” she said, adding it was also a practical problem for people who worked at night. Additionally, you were locked out if you didn’t get to the Safe Space by 8pm.
No drugs or alcohol were allowed at the Safe Spaces, but there was also a severe shortage of treatment facilities where people could be helped to deal with their addiction, she said, which meant people were expected to go cold turkey for at least 12 hours. Depending on a person’s level of substance dependence, this could be life-threatening.
She said for this reason, Ndifuna Ukwazi tried to enjoin the Minister of Social Development to the case, as Ndifuna Ukwazi believed the department had a duty to ensure there were sufficient substance abuse treatment facilities, and a suitable level of care was provided at the City’s shelters. However, they were not successful.
She said the eviction application will be back before the High Court on 14 October, and Ndifuna Ukwazi hopes to resolve some of the constitutional issues for their 50 clients during the hearing.
The City did not respond to questions on the eviction application.
Nowhere left to go
An increasing number of people have been living in Hope Street Park in since the Covid lockdown, with the number of structures in the park now at about 30.
With no running water, and no toilets, the area around the park, which also has a number of derelict buildings, stinks of faeces and unhygienic conditions. Nonetheless, it is home for people such as Abosh, who has been living there since October 2021.
Abosh, who asked his full name to be withheld as he feared members of a gang he used to belong to would seek him out, said he felt safe at the park.
“No-one from outside can rob you here,” he said, indicating everyone knew each other.
Abosh, who is 30, said he became homeless after his mother died and he was no longer able to live in the BoKaap home she stayed in, as the landlord took it back. He said he also could not live with his sisters in his late father’s house in Khayelitsha as he used to be a member of a gang there when he was an adolescent and if he didn’t join them again, they would kill him. “There’s only one way out (of the gang),” he said, meaning death.
Although he got his matric in 2013 while living with his mother, he was not able to get a job as he had a criminal record for theft and drug possession, for which he served two years in Pollsmoor. “That was hard,” he said, quietly.
Abosh said he wants to get job with Streetscapes – an NGO that provides temporary City-funded jobs to homeless people – but he missed the last intake as he had a leg injury from getting beaten up by a group of revellers on Long Street.
He said he also wanted to get on onto Streetscapes’s housing programme, but he was still using drugs and had to find a way to get clean first.
It was clear that a number of other people living at the park were addicted to drugs such as mandrax, were psychologically unwell, or suffered from disabilities such as deafness.
More help needed
Meanwhile, school children attending St. Mary’s Primary school opposite the Hope Street Park have for years not been able to make use of the open area.
Acting school principal Rensie Cloete said although she was only posted to the school in April this year, the staff told her the park used to be used for activities such as soccer and athletics, as the school only has tarred surfaces.
“The teachers say it was lovely when they used to use it before,” said Cloete.
She said otherwise the only other negative experience was a burglary in April this year, which was traced back to one of the people who lived in the park. But she said fortunately the school did not lose much from the break in.
She said the ward councillor, Ian McMahon, had met with her and told her the eviction application was being heard in October.
Local resident and member of the City Bowl Residents and Ratepayers Association, Adrian Collins, said it was sad to see the area he had walked past for decades deteriorate to its current state.
But Collins said while it was terrible people were living in unhygienic conditions; they could not just be stripped of the shelter they had created for themselves and “shoved somewhere else”.
He said beyond a massive housing shortage, there needed to be far more social workers and treatment centres.
While organisations like Streetscapes were doing “marvellous work”, it was not enough.
He said the Culemborg Safe Space which has 500 beds, has two social workers, but they were overburdened with administration work. “By the time they get to any social wellbeing … I don’t know what they can do.”
He said while there was a desperate shortage of social workers, the City had no problem employing law enforcement officers.
“However, many law enforcement officers we employ, let’s employ the equivalent number of social workers,” he said.
The City did not respond to questions asking how many social workers it employs.
Streetscapes spokesperson Chantel Sampson said they had a Public Employment Programme (PEP) funded by the City, which paid participants R200 a day to clean the City streets. As part of the programme, participants were also helped to adhere to any medical treatment they might be on.
She said a new PEP cohort were expected to be recruited in July, dependent on funds being provided by the City. There were people from the Hope Street Park on the list.