The mayor and City would do well to look at what other international cities and an organisation here in Cape Town have been doing successfully in their quest to address homelessness. Picture: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
The mayor and City would do well to look at what other international cities and an organisation here in Cape Town have been doing successfully in their quest to address homelessness.
Cities that have rejected the same system the mayor of Cape Town keeps defending and expanding and replacing with what is currently considered best practice.
Few people are aware of the massive reduction in numbers of those experiencing homelessness in Texas in the US and our own policymakers have a great deal to learn from them.
The focus in Texas has become, dignified accommodation. They, like the mayor and most of Cape Town’s residents, including myself, also do not like or tolerate encampments, but this is what they do: in Houston, when it’s time to clear a camp, outreach workers spend a month or more getting to know the occupants and figuring out what they need.
This does not happen in Cape Town although the mayor would have us believing it does.
In Texas, anyone they can’t immediately house is generally offered a spot in the city’s 100-bed ‘navigation centre’ (What our safe spaces should be.)
The navigation centre is a big step up from traditional shelters and safe spaces where dozens of people sleep together in dormitories, occupants have to leave early each morning, and residents often see no discernible path to long-term housing.
At the navigation centre, people sleep four to a room, can bring pets, and during the day can relax in a comfy living room with TVs, a pool table and snacks. Entire encampments move into the centre at once, allowing people to maintain close friendships forged on the streets.
There’s one big way the navigation centre differs from a regular shelter or safe space: it gets people into permanent housing.
Texas’ largest city pours its homeless funding into long-term housing instead of shelters that offer a temporary fix. Most of that housing is in privately-owned apartments, where vouchers help formerly homeless people pay the rent.
Rapid rehousing has proven successful in Cape Town too.
The organisation Outsider, which I founded, launched a programme called Restart in January 2024. Restart has focused on individuals that make up the bulk of people living on the streets, Safe Spaces and shelters of Cape Town that should for all intents and purposes not be there.
The elderly, the disabled, the single moms escaping abusive relationships, LGBTQIA+ youth, families who through job loss have lost their home, and individuals who have managed to self employ themselves while living on the streets.
These individuals should be seen for who and what they are and not merely as the collective known as “the homeless”, who must be grateful for whatever charity and accommodation we give them.
Over the past seven months, Restart has, with the assistance of a small group of private donors, managed to rapidly re-home over 200 of these individuals in eight different accommodation venues across the city.
Most of these individuals started paying their own rent during their second month of accommodation and not one has returned to the streets.
Restart identifies rental properties and negotiates affordable rentals payable at reasonable intervals with these landlords, and secures the agreement for at least six months.
People are accommodated in double or family rooms which are lockable and afford these individuals a sense of privacy and agency.
Donors assist us with paying the first month’s rent and in providing necessities such as basic food items and toiletries.
Restart provides access to harm reduction therapists and psychosocial support as well as helping the elderly and disabled sort out their IDs and grants, the moms with child grants, and support those that have self-employed themselves, by not restricting their movements.
Recently, I learned about Porchlight Eastgate in Washington, US, where the developer and architect wanted to change the public’s perception about homelessness and homeless shelters. They also wanted to improve their community’s relationship with its homeless residents.
They wanted to send a different kind of message to homeless people – one that says: you deserve a clean and safe home, and your quality of life matters too; your healing matters too.
Another such development is Weingart Center Tower, in LA’s Skid Row, which will open soon.
This 278-unit development provides a self-contained environment that protects the formerly homeless residents of Skid Row from what once felt like utter hopelessness around them.
This high rise will elevate the neighbourhood, changing the way locals think and interact with Skid Row. This supportive housing facility will not only serve the homeless community in Los Angeles but will also be the largest housing project in the city.
One of my favourite features offered here is four outdoor spaces with dog runs. Often, homeless people are forced to let go of pets in order to enter a shelter or safe space, and it’s one of the reasons many don’t make it indoors.
* Carlos Mesquita is an activist for the homeless and a researcher working in the Western Cape Legislature for the GOOD Party.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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