Why the courts alone can’t solve homelessness

An op-ed from APCOF describes how, despite a court order, the City of Cape Town was yet to return the seized possessions after evicting homeless staying in District Six, including cellphones, mattresses, and identification documents. The article on ‘Why the courts alone can’t solve homelessness’ shows how Cape Town’s use of the ‘broken window’ approach to policing is failing to provide safety for the most vulnerable groups of the society. Laying out clear alternatives based on credible, existing solutions to tackling homelessness, it calls on the different actors to ‘collectively imagine alternative, sustainable interventions and move away from the blunt instrument of criminalisation’.