Urban contestations for housing: Reclaiming and deracialising Cape Town’s inner city

Abstract

On the last weekend of March 2017, members of the Reclaim the City movement occupied two vacant government buildings: The old Woodstock Hospital on Mountain Road, Woodstock and Helen Bowden Nurses Home, located just about five minutes’ walk to one of Cape Town’s major tourist attractions, the V & A Waterfront. Following protracted contestations against the sale of the Tafelberg site in Sea Point, the Western Cape government committed both sites to address socio-spatial segregation through the development of affordable housing for the low-income families in Cape Town. Reclaim the City then occupied these buildings to put the government to account. Five years later, these occupations are meeting real housing needs.