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06/12/2006 11:53 AM - (SA) City gives hand-up to street people toyah lord
On top of that, the chairperson of the subcouncil, Councillor JP Smith, has lobbied the mayoral committee member for finance, Councillor Ian Neilson, and the mayor to set aside an amount of R3 million for the adult version of the Smile-A-Child campaign. "Essentially, we are putting our money where our mouth is, as we believe that the 'big stick' approach does not work with street people and that law enforcement is ineffectual," says Smith. The City of Cape Town has esta?blished a Street People Portfolio Committee, called "Homeless Agency", to give ongoing attention to the matter of street people in the city. "We are the only city in the country that has elevated the issue of street people to the level of having a whole portfolio committee dedicated to it, with all the powers and duties of a portfolio committee," says Smith. The R317 150 to be spent on street people by the Cape of Good Hope Subcouncil extends across two of its three wards. An outreach worker on the Atlantic Seaboard is to be paid R16 000, while outreach workers in the Mill Street bridge and Kloofnek Intersection areas will receive R96 000. A total of R52 000 is to be spent on a graffiti clean-up project headed up by Men on the Side of the Road, while a street sweeping project led by Straatwerk will receive R78 000. Only former street people currently in shelters and showing some progress will qualify for placement on these projects. Also on the list is R35 000 that the city will be providing for job placement programmes for former street people. Lastly, an amount of R36 500 is to be spent on supplying 10 beds to the District Six Shelter. Other rehabilitation programmes include a graffiti removal team and a park maintenance team. The graffiti removal team is responsible for removing graffiti and tagging on public bridges, buil?dings, roads, street signs and the sea wall, while the park maintenance crew helps maintain City Council parks and open spaces. Smith emphasises that the city would prefer to spend some money from year to year to progressively address Cape Town's street people problem, rather than throw millions of rands at it years down the line when it has snowballed into a much bigger problem. After two years at the drawing board the City Council recently adopted the Draft Adult Street People Strategy, compiled by Smith and the Central Street People's Forum, with the aim of achieving the same results for adult street people as the Smile-A-Child campaign has done for street children. The subcouncil's funding of outreach workers will pay for the continued work of three such workers who have been working among street people for some time now. Outreach workers help street people to find assistance grants, provide counselling and help them obtain permanent employment and accommodation. "At the same time, outreach workers report criminal issues to the SAPS ensuring that, if assistance grants are abused, it is reported to Social Services. They see to it that hotspots are responded to, and that social problems such as the informal recycling operators are monitored," says Smith. The chairperson of the Sea Point Community Police Forum, Heather Tager, says that in the last year, Atlantic Seaboard outreach worker Natalie Coetzee has helped approximately 380 street people ? by reuni?ting and placing them back at home with their families after continuous liaison, placing them in shelters, assisting them to become established in permanent jobs or putting them into various programmes. "In the last year, feedback has been very positive and we have only had two people go back to living on the streets," says Tager. Working in conjunction with the Cape Town Partnership and its social development coordinator, projects such as a current campaign to have a ban placed on intoxicating glue products have also been launched. Street People Portfolio Committee meetings are open to all NGOs and members of the public.
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