The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (PRASA) is developing a new 1,055 unit social housing project at Goodwood Station worth R575m.

Social housing, administered by the Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA), provides subsidised accommodation to citizens with monthly incomes of between R1,850 and R22,000.

The Goodwood development, led by PRASA's investment arm Intersite, includes bachelor, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units, with completion expected in May 2024. The project is a collaborative effort between SHRA, the Infrastructure Fund, and the City of Cape Town.

PRASA plans further, similar developments near other transport nodes in the future, totalling R6bn. The national rail transport company owns a land portfolio of 4,500ha, valued at over R5bn, and aims to collect R1bn in revenue from it over the next three to five years.

Despite rising building costs and high interest rates, PRASA insists on the profitability of these housing projects, and their importance to balancing its notoriously overstretched budget. Prasa Group CEO Hishaam Emeran stated that Prasa will achieve 6%-7% of gross rental income annually during the development lease of the project.

The project, by placing housing closer to rail terminals, hopes also to make up for the massive collapse of passenger rail traffic in recent years due to a combination of mismanagement, poor security, union strikes, vandalism and metals theft.

Housing waiting lists in the Western Cape are long, with 599,855 people still waiting to receive housing, which is often hampered by land invasions on planned construction sites. Clearing this backlog is expected to cost R100bn.

The SHRA aims to achieve 30,000 social housing units by March 2024, also focusing on areas close to transport and economic hubs.