By Rachel Mohamed
During the winter months, the much talked-about topic that comes up often is the issue of homelessness. People ask or sometimes wonder how homeless people survive on the streets of Cape Town. Some people see the number of homeless people increasing due to the socio-economic conditions and the high standards of living as the main contributors to South Africa’s weakening economy.
VOC News team took to the streets to find out what the public sentiments were on the topic and spoke to residents in and around the Salt River area to hear their views on the number of homeless people in the Central Business District (CBD).
Some residents showed empathy, while others expressed their dissatisfaction with the government not doing enough to help homeless people living on the streets during the winter season.
“We are disappointed that the government is not seeing to the plight of the homeless people living on the streets, as our people are lying on the road without a shelter over their heads.”
“The government should let them stay in shelters by providing shelter, especially during the winter, by feeding them and getting them jobs.”
Vision Child and Youth Care Centre a non-profit organization that dedicates its time and effort to helping orphaned, abused, and abandoned children said, “To see our children and people who are homeless has become a very painful and heartbreaking point, and caring for children is my passion and very dear to my heart.”
Another resident said, “I feel sorry for them because where must they go? They don’t have a place to stay because there is no money and there are no jobs for homeless people.”
James van der Merwe is a young man who is of the view that the government needs to revisit its policies in terms of dealing with the issue of homelessness and helping people with housing by getting them off the streets.
VOC News spoke to people who now call the streets their home, and they described homelessness as a big challenge that needs a solution.
Nakita McClain is one of the people who ended up on the streets after the death of her mother, as she could not find any place to stay. “In the first place, it was because my mother passed away.”
She hopes to one day live a better life for herself by making a difference in her community.
“Now that I am on the streets, I ended up smoking drugs, and I am disappointed in myself because this is not what I want to be. I pray to God to get me off the streets because I want to make a change in myself and my community,” she stated.
Fredericks Jordan is a 63-year-old pensioner who also became homeless after his parent’s deaths and was moving from one place to another until he ended up living on the streets.
“I have lived on the streets since my parents died, and I’m looking for a place to stay as I am receiving old age grants,” he said. He further stated that shelters have since changed as they are not a welcoming place to live in, and he wouldn’t live in a place where he is not welcome.
Earlier this week, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis officially opened the latest Safe Spaces in Greenpoint. Although the initiative may have been welcomed by some, a former homeless man feels this is not enough to eradicate homelessness within the city.
Speaking on VOC’s Breakfast, a columnist on homelessness and also works as a researcher for the Good Party in the Western Cape Carlos Mesquita has raised concerns about the public’s perception when it comes to homeliness.
“The biggest obstacle to getting homeless is the fact that the public does not understand what it means to be homeless and what homelessness is all about. Hence, I educate people by trying to express this state of homelessness through my columns. In the past, people had preconceived ideas about homelessness,” he said.
“The officials from the city look through the lens of a blame game when dealing with the issue of homelessness, even though there are structural reasons for the homeless people that make them land on the streets.” People don’t decide to leave on the roads, and the reasons can sometimes be abuse, and they don’t know how to deal with it.”
Furthermore, he highlighted that the city has no research-based data on the actual number of people living on the streets.
“The biggest problem is that the City of Cape Town does not have any data on homelessness, and we have invited the city to join us on a count. We counted over 14,000 individuals living on the streets, and they don’t have the people’s history in terms of how the living conditions were before people lived on the streets and what their journeys were. But they are throwing good money on an intervention; they can’t deal with a project of safe spaces for shelters,” he stated.
Mesquita has explained the recent court case that investigated the rules based on safe spaces and the living conditions of individuals living in them.
“With the latest court case where the city was granted the evictions, and by the grace of God, they were going to supervise the situation themselves,”
“In the last quarter on evictions with a court order, the city ended up changing the rules of the shelters where the city had homeless people entering at 6 AM and vacating at 6 PM. They also changed rules for married couples to stay together instead of living separately in either female or male dormitories, and the judge said they needed to look at privacy issues within these spaces.”
“And also change the rules on time spent by these individuals, as they have three to six months to live in safe spaces before, and after that, they go back to the streets and hope that these rules will apply to all safe spaces.”
VOC News
Photo: Pixabay
