Cape Town city council approves plan to sell Woodstock Hospital

Woodstock Hospital, occupied since 2017, is to go on sale. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks

• Woodstock Hospital, currently occupied by more than 800 people, is to be advertised for sale.
• The successful bidder will be required to build affordable housing on the site.
• The housing will probably not be state-subsidised: instead, a discount will be offered on the property to enable the developer to build affordable housing for households earning less than R32,000 a month.
• Reclaim the City, the movement responsible for the building’s occupation, has welcomed the move to build affordable housing but opposes any eviction of people living there.

In a meeting on Thursday, the Cape Town city council approved, in principle, a proposal to sell Woodstock Hospital for a mixed-income residential development.

The R87-million property will now go on sale. The successful bidder will be required to build 500 residential units on the site, which will include “affordable housing” for households earning between R3,500 and R32,000 a month.

More than 800 people currently unlawfully occupy the property, according to a report tabled before council.

The site was occupied by members of the Reclaim the City affordable housing campaign in 2017. They renamed the building Cissie Gool House.

Housing activists and residents have welcomed the move to build affordable housing on the site, but do not want any of the current occupants to be evicted.

Previous proposals included an option for state-subsidised social housing, which would cap rental amounts at about R7,326 a month for households earning less than R22,000 a month.

The City has instead opted to go for open-market affordable housing for households earning less than R32,000 a month. This threshold is based on the Financial Sector Code Affordable Housing Standards.

“In the absence of state funding, the development will be funded through various funding sources such as debt finance, investment capital and developers’ equity,” says the City’s report.

The sale price will be discounted to enable the developer to keep units affordable.

A clause will be included in the contract with the developer to ensure that, should the property not be used for affordable housing as intended, the sale agreement will be reversed.

“No apartheid-style mass eviction”

A public participation process for the proposed sale was approved in August 2024. A total of 236 comments and 172 objections were received.

Councillor Ian McMahon (DA) told the city council: “The overall message from residents can be summarised clearly. There is a significant concern about displacement and eviction. There is a strong resistance to a conventional private disposal of the site. There is clear support for redevelopment if it delivers affordable or social housing,” he said.

Mayco member for human settlements Carl Pophaim told the council his department is surveying the people living at the site to understand “exactly who these residents are”.

He said the concerns about the people living in the building were noted. “There will not be an apartheid-style mass eviction in our city,” he added.

In a statement, Reclaim the City outlined its demands: none of the occupiers should be evicted, the redevelopment should include enough truly affordable rental housing which is secure and long-term, and it must be “co-designed” with occupiers to ensure it is well managed, maintained, cost-effective, safe for women and children and fit for communal living.

“Occupiers moved into Cissie Gool House because we were facing unaffordable rentals and evictions in the inner city, Woodstock and Salt River. We wanted to reclaim the inner city for poor and working-class residents. We wanted the City to provide alternative accommodation for evictees in the inner city. We wanted the City to use its public land to build affordable housing.”

“This has been our struggle, and we believe the successful redevelopment of Cissie Gool House is a part of that struggle. Cissie Gool House could demonstrate what is possible when the City works with communities to resolve challenging problems - a model for housing in our inner cities,” Reclaim the City said.

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