The Western Cape Government delivered just 3 046 new subsidised homes in 2024/25, say the writer.
Two answers tabled in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament this month amount to a confession that the DA-run province and City of Cape Town don’t know the scale of the housing crisis they are meant to be managing.
Let’s start with the headline number. MEC for Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers says there are currently 754 260 households registered on the Western Cape Housing Demand Database. That’s approximately 65 000 families more than were on the database 16 months ago.
More than 413 000 of the families on the database have been waiting over a decade, with 92 390 waiting for more than 15 years and 175 904 waiting for more than 20 years.
The City of Cape Town carries the heaviest backlog by far; its 490 901-household shortfall makes up nearly two-thirds of the entire provincial backlog, including 120 838 households that have waited more than two decades.
