The City of Cape Town's housing delivery rate is half what it should be.
The city has built only 43 000 of 1,6 million low-cost homes completed in South Africa since 1994.
With a target of 16 000 low-cost homes a year, Cape Town has been producing just 8 000.
But at an informal media breakfast on Thursday, the city's director of human settlements, Seth Maqethuka, said the council intended to increase this rate to 20 000 units a year by 2014 - the year the city has pledged to eradicate informal settlements.
Maqethuka confirmed the delivery rate was too slow.
He said R1,46-billion, or 64 percent, of the city's capital budget had been set aside this year to build "human settlements", rather than just RDP houses.
The N2 Gateway housing project, which aims to deliver 24 000 homes in a year-and-a-half, was a key contributor, and similar projects would be rolled out throughout the province. Those on the city's housing waiting lists would receive essential services while their homes were being built.
But people should not get the impression that the N2 Gateway was the only housing project in Cape Town.
There were several others, including 3 000 units planned at Wingfield, 9 000 at Wallacedene, and others.
A shortage of housing has been behind some of the violent protests which have rocked the city this year.
On Wednesday the council unveiled plans to deal with problem squatter areas by hastening development, so as to create places where people could live and work.
The city's director of urban renewal, George Penxa, said Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain had originally been intended to house about 250 000 people each.
But each had many more than that, and this put strain on the infrastructure of new developments.
Dave Hugo, the city's director of programme management, said the administration was in daily contact with communities over plans.
Problems arose in areas such as the informal settlement of QQ in Khayelitsha - scene of several violent protests recently - when people had to be moved because land they had occupied was unsuitable for development.
In QQ, the long-term plan was to move people to new sites, but in the short term the city would provide sanitation, water and rubbish removal on the periphery of the area - the density of shacks meant penetration was limited.
Hugo said the city was serious about providing infrastructure to poor communities, but this could also lead to problems. - Staff Reporter.