R87m spent but no homes: Hospital View housing site in Tembisa abandoned and vandalised

R87 million has been spent on the Hospital View Housing Project in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, but the planned 500 housing units remain unfinished and the site has been left abandoned and vandalised, according to The Citizen.

Project started in 2020, now derelict

The Citizen reports the Hospital View Housing Project was initiated in 2020. Despite the significant expenditure, the development has not been completed and the site has suffered vandalism.

Voices demanding accountability

The Citizen quotes Themba Godi, leader of the African People’s Convention and former chair of the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), who said government officials and construction companies were abandoning projects and engaging in corrupt activities.

“simply because they knew that nothing would happen to them”.

The Citizen also records Godi saying that annual financial reports often showed budgets exhausted while projects remained unfinished and that this pattern highlighted both poor project management and deliberate corrupt practices.

“We know that in urban areas, housing is a major problem and yet that is where you get a lot of corruption happening,”

the paper reports.

Department response and wider context

According to The Citizen, the Gauteng department of human settlement’s spokesperson, Tahir Sema, acknowledged difficulties in completing projects and attributed many failures to problems with developers. The paper quotes Sema:

“The most common driver is a developer who cannot deliver, either through poor workmanship, weak financial management, or cash flow collapse partway through a multiyear build.”

The Citizen says that in cases where a developer collapses, government faces the challenge of terminating contracts and reprocurement, and that restarting stalled projects requires securing fresh funding because budgets are allocated annually and costs can escalate.

Abandoned projects across the country

The Citizen cites Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane giving national figures on stalled work. The paper reports that the department targeted attending to some 212 abandoned projects in the 2025-26 financial year, and that abandoned projects across the country were estimated at R37 billion.

The Citizen provides a provincial breakdown attributed to Simelane: the Free State had 154 abandoned projects; Gauteng 12; KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo each had four; Mpumalanga had two; Northern Cape had three; North West had 21; and the Western Cape had seven.

Political reaction and calls for investigation

The Citizen reports the opposition Democratic Alliance has highlighted other abandoned developments and called for answers and accountability. The paper quotes DA Rand West mayoral candidate Jacques Julius on the broader failure to protect public infrastructure and deliver promised housing.

As reported by The Citizen, the Hospital View Housing Project in Tembisa remains unfinished despite the R87 million spent, leaving intended beneficiaries without the homes the project was meant to provide.