CT City to clean up its own property

A new problem-building strategy developed by the City of Cape Town to crackdown on privately owned derelict buildings, is now being used to clean up the city's own property.Mayoral committee member on safety and security Jean Pierre (JP) Smith said the task team which formulated the strategy would be serving notices "on ourselves".
Smith said the notices would go to the city's property manager as notification that the city's derelict buildings needed to be cleaned up.

Good Hope subcouncil chair Taki Amira, who chaired the problem building strategy task team in April, confirmed that the strategy would be enforced on "city owned" and private property.

Amira said in line with the strategy a notice valid for 30 days would be issued to those who owned derelict buildings, and if there was no response within the given time frame a summons to appear in court would be issued.

"Even city owned buildings would be issued a notice to comply," he said.

"If they don't they will be hauled to court."

However, the City's property director Peter Henshall-Howard, while confirming that the strategy applied to private and city-owned property, said the strategy was being run as a pilot project to "test it" and did not have a "status policy per se".

Henshall-Howard said initially the strategy excluded city-owned buildings but the exclusion was removed.

He said dealing with buildings was "very complex" and not a simple matter.
City property management director Ruby Gelderbloem said there were 800 properties in the city's property management department, of which six were vacant and undergoing maintenance and would be ready for occupation in "three to six months time".

But Gelderbloem said there were only three officials responsible for maintenance and property management.

City-owned buildings included Harrington Street numbers 131, 135 and 137 as well as buildings in New Church and Maynard Streets which have not been repaired or maintained for some years.

A visit to the Harrington Street properties revealed that they are overcrowded and have broken windows and paint peeling off the walls.

Tenants, who did not want to be named, said no renovations had been undertaken by the city over the past ten years, yet the city collected monthly rent. One tenant said living conditions were "like a squatter camp".

Geysers weren't working, gates were broken and homeless people had easy access to the property and stole possessions left outside, he said.

Gelderbloem said the Harrington Street properties were situated within a proposed road scheme and the uncertainty of whether the road scheme would go ahead limited the amount of money the city could spend on the buildings.

She said the current management had inherited a maintenance backlog from the former administration.

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