The legal battle over the eviction of hundreds of people occupying the City of Tshwane-owned homeless shelter – the dilapidated Number 2 Struben Street building – is heading to the SCA, reports News24.

An April 2025 report, which forms part of documents before the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria), found that the ablution facilities are non-functional. The shelter is also filthy due to the non-collection of rubbish bins and occupants ‘not cleaning properly’.

The report estimates that more than 500 people are living at the shelter, which has a capacity of 200.

According to the city, it had tried to relocate the shelter’s residents, but without success. This led the city to seek an eviction order, which Judge Anthony Millar granted in November 2025, ordering that the occupants be relocated to six shelters identified by the city.

However, the legal battle has since taken a twist, as Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) – which had previously represented the residents of the shelter, before withdrawing and then seemingly entering the fray again – applied for leave to appeal against the eviction order.

The leave-to-appeal application centred on allegations that the eviction would result in homelessness and that the court had failed to take into account the potential breach of the occupiers’ constitutional rights.

In a judgment handed down on Tuesday, Millar granted leave to appeal to the SCA.

While granting the application, Millar slammed LHR for what he called ‘opportunistic conduct’ as LHR was nowhere to be seen to assist either the court, the city, or the affected persons when the matter was called in court.

But once the eviction order was granted, LHR placed itself on record again and sought to impugn the process that had occurred in their absence.

The court further said that the application for leave to appeal sought, without any evidence, to impugn the proposed alternative accommodation.

In addition, Millar was of the opinion that all affected persons were being treated with sensitivity and dignity, and that their concerns were addressed and reflected in the order made, according to News24.

However, Millar said having regard to section 17(1)(a)(ii) of the Superior Court’s Act, the main reason to grant the application is that, if it were treated as a request for leave to appeal and denied, over half of the 466 affected individuals would lose further recourse, while the rest, who neither attended court nor authorised LHR to act, could still apply to rescind the order.

Full News24 report