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The Metropolis of Cape City should assessment and amend all by-laws that criminalise homelessness with out simply trigger. This was one in every of over 150 suggestions in a report into homelessness commissioned by the Metropolis.
The greater than 400-page report was compiled by The Inkathalo Conversations (TIC). It criticises the native authorities’s present response to homelessness and questions its processes that produced the latest modifications to Metropolis by-laws. It must be famous that the report was anticipated to be launched over a yr in the past.
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Latest modifications to the Metropolis’s by-laws, handed on 29 September, seem to run opposite to the report’s suggestions, significantly people who superb homeless folks for refusing presents of shelter.
The report covers eight common areas, together with the criminalisation of homeless folks, and the institutional drivers of homelessness. It additionally options “particular reviews” on what it calls homeless tax, and on the controversial Strandfontein Camp that was established by the Metropolis for native homeless folks as a response to the Covid pandemic.
The report’s suggestions largely centered on amending the Metropolis’s 2013 Avenue Individuals Coverage, but in addition supplied ideas for nationwide and provincial governments’ responses to homelessness.
A few of these embody:
- The Metropolis of Cape City and all different municipalities should assessment and amend all by-laws that criminalise homelessness with out simply trigger
- Regulation Enforcement officers must be retrained for coping with homelessness
- A R1 levy by all householders particularly for homelessness interventions
- The Metropolis’s ‘accountable giving’ campaigns ought to assessment their public communication, significantly as it’s deceptive, significantly about obtainable mattress house within the Metropolis
- An investigation into the Strandfontein homeless camp led by the Provincial Authorities and the South African Human Rights Fee
- 24-hour entry to ample and free ablution amenities, entry to showers and waste amenities
- Secure and safe storage areas for homeless folks to retailer their private belongings
- The creation of a social contract to alleviate and finish homelessness
- Biennial analysis into homelessness that may “type the premise of all coverage setting, technique design, and planning work”
- The institution of an inter-governmental company focussed on homelessness
- Dwelling Affairs ought to expedite issuing of nationwide id paperwork, start certificates, and different civic registrations to homeless folks
- The price of making use of for id paperwork which have been confiscated by Regulation Enforcement exercise shouldn’t be borne by homeless folks
- The Metropolis of Cape City ought to embody homelessness as a criterion for emergency housing
- Do extra to forestall homelessness earlier than it arises
- A assessment of the choices obtainable to deal with substance abuse
The report states, “It’s our hope that the assorted position gamers … within the sector will take time to digest the report and supply their enter …”
Ndifuna Ukwazi is at the moment litigating in opposition to the Metropolis in relation to its homeless by-laws.
The Metropolis has not too long ago introduced that it’s going to strategy the Constitutional Courtroom to safe eviction orders in opposition to homeless tent encampments within the Metropolis, that are at the moment barred below the present Catastrophe Administration Act.
A lot of the report’s content material is from the testimony of people that responded to the decision for submissions. These embody homeless and previously homeless folks, folks working for homelessness reduction and help organisations, and authorities officers.
In accordance with the report, on 31 July 2020, “The Metropolis of Cape City, via the workplace of Councillor Zahid Badroodien [Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health], requested The Inkathalo Conversations to facilitate an unbiased ‘pre-public participation course of’ that would supply suggestions that might enhance the Metropolis’s insurance policies and techniques to deal with homelessness.”
The Inkathalo Conversations didn’t reply to GroundUp’s questions by time of publication, so it’s unclear what the exact authorized standing of the group is, its funding or what the Metropolis’s dedication to the outcomes have been.
Metropolis Spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo advised GroundUp, “The Metropolis is reviewing the Avenue Individuals Coverage, and can assessment the [report] in the course of the course of. Extra communication on the Avenue Individuals Coverage shall be launched by the incoming Mayoral Committee Member.”
© 2021 GroundUp. This text was first revealed right here, and is republished with permission.
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