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Stuck in Tin Can Town
The Citizen
|September 17, 2024
There are no parks, mountain or beach here. Why can’t my kids have that?’
Ursula Felkers moved to "Tin Can Town" in 2007 after being evicted from a flat near the centre of Cape Town when a new landlord took over.
She thought she would only be in Blikkiesdorp - where row upon row of shacks stand on a desolate plot next to Cape Town's international airport for a few months.
Intended for “housing emergencies", the site 25km from central Cape Town, made headlines in 2010 when the municipality was accused of moving thousands of homeless people there ahead of the World Cup.
"The city originally said this was only for three to six months," said Felkers, 43, at her tworoomed shack made from rusting metal sheets. But a new housing project fell through and "16 years later, we are still waiting".
"In summer, you suffocate inside. In winter, it's like an icebox," she said. There is not much here: no shops, no services, no work.
This story is from the September 17, 2024 edition of The Citizen.
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