The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Malusi Booi, earlier today, 4 September 2019, visited some of the completed efficiency and maintenance projects in Atlantis. The City’s Public Housing Department has completed work to 202 rental units.

The projects form part of the broader maintenance programme of public housing units. Many of these Council rental flats were built in the 1940’s and 1950’s by the apartheid regime to accommodate residents who were victims of the Group Areas Act.

‘The Council rental units are a vital part of the affordable residential accommodation continuum that provides homes to the most vulnerable residents. The City owns approximately 50 000 rental units that are located across various areas of the metro.

We are therefore one of the largest landlords in the country. Apart from emergency and day-to-day maintenance to ensure the safety of our tenants, we must also increasingly make these rental units future-fit by retrofitting this old apartheid plumbing. In particular, sewer pipes that were installed by the apartheid regime that were placed inside of the units are now being moved to run outside of the units. These programmes are vital and they are expensive. It is therefore so important that our tenants pay their way as we are dependent on rental income to perform our maintenance programmes. We have many tenants who pay as little as R20 per month, but they pay. There are many who can afford the rental contribution but refuse to pay. We encourage all of our tenants to pay what they can so that we can roll out more and more of these projects,’ said Councillor Booi.

Apart from the sewer pipe work, the Atlantis project entailed leak repairs, the fitting of dual-flush water efficient cisterns; the installation of restrictors on taps at wash basins and kitchen sinks to reduce water flow and the replacement of broken sanitary ware, where applicable.

Work also continues in areas across the metro. In the current financial year R172 million has been budgeted for overall maintenance of City rental stock.

Apart from the day-to-day, emergency and general maintenance programmes, and the special water efficiency projects, there are also projects such as the replacement of 969 concrete precast staircases at multi-storey City rental units that have been identified to benefit from the maintenance and upgrading project by the City’s Human Settlements Directorate.

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