Lessons learnt from the mother city
Raymond Perrier said learning about the homeless in Cape Town has shown him how much more can be expected from government partners.
THE Director of the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC) recently visited a range of homeless partners in Cape Town on a fact finding mission.
Raymond Perrier said the most striking difference between Cape Town and Durban, was the level of support that the homeless and the NGOs who work with them receive from the Municipal and Provincial governments. “We are making some progress in eThekwini but it is good to know how much is possible,” he commented.
Perrier, who is also the chair of the eThekwini Multi-Sectoral Task team for Homelessness, said the main outreach in the CBD is provided by a team of Municipal fieldworkers who know every homeless person by name.
“They can then refer people to the Safe Open Sleeping Space under the flyover which has been operating for 18 months and provides an alternative to the streets for 300 people each night. It is remarkable how racially integrated the group of 300+ is. The staff – some city employees, some from an NGO subsidised by the Municipality – showed great kindness in welcoming people and listening to their needs,” he said.
Perrier said once a homeless person shows a commitment to changing their life, they can be referred into first-level and second-level shelters, and places are funded for several months by the Provincial Department of Social Development.
“The shelters are so well run that most of the work in them – cooking, cleaning, maintenance – is done by the homeless residents themselves. During the day, a good number of homeless people are able to get into Government-funded programmes for rehab and skills development or do paid work through the city’s extended public works programme. Others work in a series of NGO-run charity shops in buildings provided by the Municipality where they earn money by sorting, repairing and selling a range of clothes and household goods,” he said.
Perrier said this last project inspired him to see how the team at the DHC can take Street Lit, its empowerment project where homeless people make a living selling second-hand books, to a higher level.
“The whole experience of Cape Town shows us how much more we can expect from government partners,” he said.
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