Tristan Breet, Sea Point
Referring to your letter “Bring life back into Sea Point”, Atlantic Sun letters May 26, Liz McGregor, as a Sea Point ratepayer as well I have grave concerns with calls supporting to develop the Tafelberg site for affordable housing, while a huge chunk of my monthly salary goes to paying the bond for my apartment I work so hard for. If I had the funds I would love to own a lovely five-bedroom house in Fresnaye but unfortunately I live according to my means, and so do thousands of people who live in the suburbs who just cannot afford to buy or even rent in areas they ideally would like to be, but they are realistic .
As a student I lived in Pretoria’s beautiful Sunnyside, walked to school and the area was clean and idyllic. Sea Point reminds me of those good old days. Have you seen what has happened to Sunnyside and Hatfield in Pretoria? Google Shubert Park and see what affordable housing has done to that apartment complex, it’s now a slum, shops in Sunnyside are now pawn shops and rundown bric-a-brac shops and 7 Elevens, drug dealers everywhere and property owners have lost the value of their properties, some cannot even sell.
Shubert Park by the way, used to be home to hundreds of families who sent their children to schools in the surrounding areas. After bad elements moved into the area, they brought the complex to a slum. Six-hundred families had to be evicted for trashing the building, which now has to be redeveloped and cleaned up to the sum of R1 billion rand, just so that decent people can live in them again.
Another example I can give you is Brixton and Melville in Johannesburg. There was a time I could park my car on the roadside and visit my friends in surrounding apartment blocks, try to do that now.
My question is, how “affordable” are we going to market these new apartments and what elements are going to inhabit them at first.
How many people are we going to stuff into each bedroom, how many of their extended family will be joining them? Who will they be sold to or rented or sublet to afterwards for higher rental?
To what extent will this effect my property value and lastly when Sea Point is turned into something like Sunnyside, how charming are you going to feel after ruining ordinary everyday hardworking people like myself who work very hard to own and maintain one little flat right opposite the area you’re so eager to give away?
Are you going to reimburse me for property value losses?
I wonder if your home will be affected.