ETHEKWINI’s newly-elected deputy mayor and long-standing friend of the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC), Belinda Scott, is throwing her support and energy behind the eThekwini Task Team to Tackle Homelessness.
Set up by the previous deputy mayor, Fawzia Peer, the Director of the DHC, Raymond Perrier, chairs the group which also incoudes organisations that work closely withe the DHC. Discussions and meetings around the task team and the homelessness issue have stretched across 12 months with very little progress made. But in her first two weeks as Deputy Mayor, Scott has managed to set things in motion.
“A Top Ten list was highlighted to her on her first day in office and action is now happening on several of these priorities. A number of city officials recently visited the proposed shelter for women and children. The Task Team first identified this site in January; it was reassuring to hear from municipal officers what they could now do to make this work after months of delay and obfuscation,” said Perrier.
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He said the group’s walkabout included a potential site for a ‘Safe Open Space’ (SOS). This strategy has been successfully employed by the City of Cape Town which provides an outdoor area where homeless people can sleep undisturbed by the police and with access to sanitation and feeding programmes.
“An ‘SOS’ in Durban would be relatively easy and cheap and is urgently needed – homeless people continue to face nightly assaults from security personnel; some have resorted to the risky option of sleeping in storm-water drains,” said Perrier.
He said the third initiative is to provide a subsidised men’s transitional shelter, as happens in other metropolitan areas, and under-used municipal buildings are being explored for this purpose.
“We look forward to working with the new Exco and with those officials who share our desire to create a truly caring city,” said Perrier.
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