The City of Johannesburg who lost its grip on managing an old age home and who alleged that it is now a nest for drug dealers and other illegal activities, lost its application to have all the occupants evicted.
The Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg said the City was the author of its own misfortune and as there were people who genuinely deserved to stay there, the City could not simply have everyone evicted.
The Donovan MacDonald Retirement Centre is a 183-unit older persons home in Florida, west of Johannesburg. The City owns and operates the centre.
It explained that the units at the centre are allocated by reference to its “vetting and selection criteria”. These criteria are deployed to ensure that only those genuinely in need of accommodation are allowed to occupy the units.
Judge Stuart Wilson commented that in this application, the City all but admitted that it had lost control of the centre, and that it could no longer say who resided there.
The City said a number of units and the common areas were poorly maintained or had been vandalised, although there was no suggestion that the condition of the buildings at the Centre was such as to present a risk of harm to its residents.
Some of the units have become illegally occupied. Others are said to be used to peddle drugs. One unit is alleged to accommodate sex work. The City, however, did not adequately explain how this happened.
“The City itself has taken no responsibility for allowing the conditions at the centre to deteriorate to the extent that they have…The City is nonetheless clear about what it wants to do to bring the centre back under its control,” Judge Wilson said.
The effect of the order the City asked for would be to remove everyone currently resident at the centre, save for those who are registered on the City’s list of “vetted” occupants.
The City cannot say how many individuals it wishes to evict. Nor can it identify those individuals with any precision. It nonetheless undertakes, before executing the eviction order, to consider their eligibility for alternative accommodation.
Judge Wilson said the City’s application did not come close to meeting the requirements to simply evict these people.
“It is in fact clear in the papers that the relief the City seeks would result in the eviction of entirely innocent occupants who, while not on the City’s list of “vetted” residents, have nothing to do with the conduct the City seeks to eliminate.”
Two of the occupants who appeared in person before the court in a bid to avoid eviction - Mr and Mrs Adonis, such occupants. The elderly couple reside in one of the units with Mrs Adonis’ even older mother who has Alzheimer’s disease.
They said they had to help her feed, bathe and dress herself, and to protect her from the obvious dangers that living on her own would present. The judge commented that ordinarily, this woman would have been moved to another facility capable of providing more intensive support, but that had not happened and the City did not explain why.
Judge Wilson said in spite of this family’s plight, the City insisted on an eviction order against all at the centre, including the Adonis family. The judge said this was solely on the basis that they were not “vetted” residents. He also noted that counsel for the City could give no undertakings that the elderly lady would receive the care she needed from some other source.
The City’s own investigations, (summarised in a report authored by a company called Phoka Forensics), suggest that there were a large number of people resident at the centre with family members.
Without any sense of who these people are, and whether or not they are the source of the conduct of which the City complains, it was impossible to identify to whom any eviction order should apply, the judge said.
He added that the Adonis family were but two of several people who appeared in person before him, none of whom seemed to the court to be the source of any threat of real and substantial injury to persons or property. Nor could the City say that they were the cause of any such threat.
“Whatever the extent of the deterioration of living conditions at the centre, the City must take its share of the responsibility for failing to prevent that deterioration. It is, after all, the City that owns the centre, and the City which ought to have put in place the controls necessary to ensure that its use is properly regulated,” Judge Wilson said in turning down the eviction application.
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