Constitution says you have a right to housing: So why are there over 200 housing projects still blocked?
· Citizen
South Africa currently has 212 blocked housing projects nationwide, Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane told parliament’s portfolio committee this week, as members of parliament (MPs) pressed the department and its regulatory entities over why housing delivery remains stalled despite the constitutional right to adequate housing.
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The session came as the Western Cape government failed to appear before the committee to explain its response to a major Constitutional Court judgment on the matter.
The province had cited ongoing court processes as its reason for staying away.
Committee chairperson Albert Seabi called the excuse “very flimsy and disrespectful to this committee,” arguing that the matter was settled at the country’s highest court and left no room for further legal manoeuvring.
Blocked projects leave beneficiaries waiting for years
Simelane explained that blocked projects – developments left incomplete, often stuck at roof level for years – represent one of the department’s most pressing challenges.
She said the department had adopted a principle requiring provinces and entities to allocate 80% of their budgets to completing existing blocked projects before starting new ones.
“We cannot start a project, leave it at roof level and then go and start another new one,” she told MPs.
Simelane singled out the Social Housing Regulatory Authority as a particular concern.
The entity failed to appear for a second consecutive sitting after its presentation missed the submission deadline, prompting her to formally reject the document.
She said some of the entity’s social housing projects had agreements dating back years, with some housing institutions now facing liquidation and legal action over incomplete developments.
“The biggest loser here is this beneficiary who is seeing a building that got stuck at roof level for three, four years,” she said.
Western Cape’s absence angers MPs
Deputy Minister Tandi Mahambehlala told the committee that the Western Cape does not, in fact, operate a standalone department of human settlements at all.
“There is no department of human settlements in the Western Cape. It’s a branch. They have what they call the Department of Infrastructure and Human Settlements. It’s a branch. It’s like those branches of the DG there in the department,” she said.
Mahambehlala added that this structural gap helps explain the recurring friction between spheres of government.
Simelane told MPs that her department had raised concerns with the province as early as 2013, when it first flagged an interest in using a vacant site in Sea Point for social housing.
She said the province pressed ahead with its own plans regardless, eventually resulting in the matter being taken to the courts.
“It is just not affordable to live in Cape Town,” Simelane told the committee, before posing a broader challenge to the city’s development pattern: “So the fundamental question is: who is Cape Town designed for?”
The court ruling behind the dispute
The dispute traces back to the sale of the Tafelberg property, a vacant site in Sea Point earmarked by campaigners for affordable housing.
On 2 July 2026, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town had failed to take reasonable steps towards providing adequate housing in the city’s well-located areas.
According to the ruling, the province and city “failed to comply with the above obligations in implementing and completing their respective social housing programmes, policies and projects in the Cape Town CBD and Sea Point” and were ordered to submit detailed implementation reports within three months.
Entities show financial strain compounding delivery delays
Beyond the blocked projects and the Tafelberg dispute, MPs raised concerns that weak finances at the department’s regulatory entities are compounding delivery problems.
The Community Schemes Ombud Service told the committee its dispute backlog had dropped from 11,838 cases in December 2025 to 4,810 by June 2026, but acknowledged it still lacks a complete national register of community housing schemes after a decade in operation.
Its acting chief ombud Rethabile Khamali explained that the organisation cannot compel non-compliant schemes to register, unlike tax authorities that can enforce penalties.
“It is not the case with CSOS,” he told MPs, adding that a legislative review was already under way to close that gap.
The Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority reported a similarly mixed picture.
Its chief executive said a new alternative accreditation pathway aimed to move thousands of long-term candidates into full business ownership, noting that white principals still vastly outnumber black-owned firms in the sector.
Committee demands accountability
Seabi said the department had reported a clean audit outcome for the first time in years, while the two entities showed gradual improvement from previous “qualified” audit findings.
Still, he warned that both organisations needed to move faster, citing signs of similar governance trouble emerging at other entities: “If you leave them to behave like that, we’re going to have a problem.”
MPs asked the department to return with a written framework on resolving blocked social housing projects, and reiterated calls for quarterly progress reports from both CSOS and the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority to track compliance with the Constitutional Court’s findings and the entities’ own turnaround targets.