Influx of homeless individuals a concern for ECID
“Edenvale’s longstanding homeless community is generally known in the town and often keeps to itself; however, the new individuals are causing chaos.”
Manager of Edenvale City Improvement District (ECID) Linda McKenzie raised concerns about the increase of homeless individuals living in the greater Edenvale area.
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McKenzie said during the past six months, the number of homeless individuals and recyclers living in Edenvale has increased.
“Edenvale’s longstanding homeless community is generally known in the town and often keeps to itself; however, the new individuals are causing chaos,” said McKenzie.
“They are defecating in front of stores. Some of them are on drugs. Shop owners and residents are suffering because of them.”
She said ECID cleaners find drug paraphernalia such as needles at a lot of the homeless individuals’ sleeping locations.
McKenzie said after speaking to some of the new faces in town, it came to light that they were originally from Kempton Park and Germiston.
“I was informed one of the reasons they came to Edenvale was because of the town’s feeding schemes,” said Mckenzie.
She said ECID understands that the economic situation is difficult and the situation these individuals live in is challenging, but people still need to obey laws.
Since the increase of these community members, McKenzie said ECID has received reports from frustrated community members.
She said some areas where recyclers and homeless people are most active include municipal parks, where recyclers often sort through material they have collected and discard what they don’t need.
McKenzie said over the past two months, ECID cleaners have assisted a community organisation in cleaning some of Edenvale’s water systems near some of the affected parks.
“It was evident that anything the recyclers did not want or need was discarded, and this ends up in the water system.
“Despite reporting the matter to the municipality numerous times, nothing is done about the situation,” said McKenzie.
“We don’t even get a response to the emails we send to the municipal departments we liaise with directly.”
McKenzie believes something needs to be done about the matter urgently.
“At the start of the pandemic, individuals living on the streets were all taken to facilities where they were cared for,” said McKenzie.
McKenzie said although most of those taken to facilities returned to their former lives, the mobilisation of resources at the start of lockdown demonstrated that something could be done.
In response to previous enquiries regarding Edenvale’s homeless community, the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) informed the NEWS, last year, that the Gauteng Department of Social Development (DSD) finalised its homeless strategy.
In November, CoE spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said DSD was the lead department in implementing the strategy.
The strategy looks at psycho-social factors, such as substance abuse, mental health, physical health, crime affiliation family conflicts as well as socio-economic factors such as poverty and unemployment.
Firstly, it hopes to advocate and prevent individuals from entering the homeless community through early intervention, supporting them and enforcing by-laws as a preventive measure.
Secondly, it plans to provide effective support by strengthening housing interventions, providing targeted housing options and offering choices and the right support for people to address the issues that put them at risk of homelessness.
Lastly, the strategy aims to create an integrated, person-centred service system by improving accountability and services for homelessness outcomes, increasing service integration and collaboration.
Dlamini said although community members may report homeless individuals to their nearest EMPD office and customer care centre, homeless individuals are referred to the provincial DSD for placement in shelters.
“When they are identified, they are referred to shelters. If they refuse, the city has no legislation or by-laws in place that forcefully places homeless individuals in shelters.”
Dlamini said when attempting to relocate homeless individuals, the majority of them prove to be aggressive and uncooperative to receiving help.
He said relocation facilities are not available when needed as they are limited by capacity.
Dlamini added the SAPS can only perform law enforcement while CoE can only enforce applicable by-laws.
He said the role of the provincial DSD performs overall management, assessment and funding roles on homeless shelters.
Other roles include beneficiary referrals for admission, developing norms and standards, capacity-building and training programmes.
A request for comment was sent to CoE on February 23, requesting comment by February 25 at 13:00.
At the time of going to print, no comment had been received.
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