Covid-19: 280 extra places for Cape Town’s homeless
2 April 2020
The City of Cape Town has laid 280 extra places for homeless people since the start of the lockdown, but it is far from enough, and many have been left with no choice but to defy the rules.
Last week, after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the nationwide lockdown on Monday 23 March, Mayco Member for Community Services and Health Zahid Badroodien said that a number of sites would be set up around the City, including repurposing the abandoned Robbie Nurock Day Hospital.
But City Councillor Brandon Golding said that Robbie Nurock Day Hospital would no longer be used by the City as a site for sheltering homeless people as it is preferable as an isolation centre. “We’re trying not to use small sites as it spreads our safety resources too thin.”
As a result, only the expansion of the Culemborg Safe Place, an outdoors area for homeless people underneath a highway overpass on the Foreshore, has created new shelter for the city’s homeless people.