Residents of Kempton Village, a social housing development project in Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, have called on Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi to urgently intervene, after they were forcefully evicted from their homes. According to the eviction notice, residents had to vacate the block of flats after they failed to settle outstanding payments for their rent and utility bills.
The Kempton Village Social Housing Project was launched by former Human Settlements Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, in November 2020. More than 150 families have been forced to brave the winter chill and sleep on the streets, after failing to keep up with increased monthly bills for their social housing units in Kempton Park.
The R128 million Social Housing Project was built to accommodate residents with rentals calculated on the gross household income. However, according to residents, since the building was taken over by a private owner, their rent and utilities bills increased sharply, resulting in many of them not managing to keep up with payments.
Call for intervention
Jeffrey Motsane, has been living in the four storey building since its inception. He says they want government to intervene urgently.
“We knocked on all the doors, our plea today is to the premier of Gauteng and the President. This is our call, we have been calling them to come and engage us and no one came and we are on the street today. And we want to go back to our unit as promised by the Ekurhuleni municipality because this is our social housing and we need the premier to come and we want the president to hear our call, we want him to come and address us.”
Another resident who chose to remain anonymous, says they have tried on several occasions to seek answers from the owner about the increased monthly bills without any success – and have now been given eviction notices.
“After few months. Let’s say at the beginning of January 2021, the high water bills started to be a problem to us and we were complaining and we were asking for assistance and there were some doors that we knocked on to get answers, so they didn’t help us. We told ourselves that the only thing that will let them come to us to give answers is to hold the rent, so they will come but they never came.”
Homeless
Phanuel Makamu, who is living with a disability, has been sleeping in a family member’s car since he was evicted. He says it is a very agonising experience for them as they have no alternate accommodation.
Makamu says many of the residents of the building are elderly citizens as well as children.
“It’s very painful for me because I am a person with disability and they promised us it’s a low cost housing and we are all working we need to pay but it looks like they twisted everything, they are robbing us now. No one is coping here, no one is coping. By the grace of God because nothing we can do now looks like our government doesn’t see everything.”
The City of Ekurhuleni Municipality as well as the Gauteng Human Settlements Department have not responded to requests for comment.
