Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, says plans have been approved to build a shelter for the homeless, with 300 beds, in Ebenezer Road in Green Point.

At the same time, he said public places in the city cannot be occupied by homeless people indefinitely and if people refuse resettlement or other help, the city’s last resort is to approach the courts, to apply for eviction orders.

The new shelter will be erected on municipal land in Green Point.

The Metro is going to invest R230 million over a period of three years to operate safe shelters and set up more shelters in the Mother City. People get two meals a day at the shelters, there are ablution facilities and social workers are available to provide assistance.

Hill-Lewis has welcomed the approval by the Municipal Planning Tribunal, with the appeals phase now also concluded.

Operations are set to begin early in the new year.

The Mayor says Safe Spaces offer dignified transitional shelter coupled with care interventions to help people find sustainable pathways off the streets, including referrals for addiction or psychiatric treatment, personal development planning, employment opportunities, ID and social grant access, and family reunifications.

We are pleased that planning approval has been granted for the City to add 300 more dignified transitional shelter beds to help people off the streets in the CBD and Atlantic Seaboard. This brings the total Safe Space beds to around 780 in central Cape Town, including the two facilities operating at Culemborg in the east CBD.

He says accepting social assistance to get off the streets is the best choice for dignity, health, and well-being.

Where offers of help to get off the streets have been persistently refused, we are seeking help from the courts as a last resort. No person has the right to reserve a public space as exclusively theirs, while indefinitely refusing all offers of shelter and social assistance.

Besides expanding its own Safe Spaces, the City is also supporting NPOs to do the same, including contributing to a 63% bed boost to the CBD’s Haven Night Shelter, expanding this facility from 96 to 156 beds.

During the winter, the City further enabled several NGOs to add 300 more temporary bed spaces to cope with additional shelter demand, including the deployment of 184 EPWP workers to assist NPOs.

RELATED: City to help shelters add 300 beds this winter

In the 12 months ending June 2023, the City says it helped almost 3 500 individuals with shelter placement or referrals to an array of social services.