CRIMINALS have invaded a government housing project after the Housing Development Agency stopped managing it.

Dozens of angry residents of the Joe Slovo Phase One flats in Langa, Cape Town, held a mass meeting on Monday night to complain that empty flats and clinic had been taken over by criminals.

The flats were built about four years ago as part of the government's aborted N2 Gateway Housing Project.

N2 Gateway Tenants Residents Committee chairperson Luthando Ndabambi told Sowetan this week that the agency had pulled out of managing the flats without giving any reason.

Ndabambi said criminals were taking advantage of the complex because it had been without security for the past seven months.

He said the government's failure to manage the flats had caused a tense situation.

"Now those calling themselves 'Cape borners' (Capetonians) are fighting those they call amagoduka (those from Eastern Cape descendants) as they claim that amagoduka should not get houses before them," Ndabambi said.

"That has forced us to volunteer guarding the complex and that creates a lot of enemies for us."

Residents at the meeting complained that the former agency office had been vandalised and the clinic divided up into rooms where new people now live.

Zalisile Mbali, the spokesperson for the provincial MEC for housing, said the province had not fired the security guards and that these were the responsibility of the agency .

Mbali added that MEC for housing Bonginkosi Madikizela had arranged a meeting with the community to resolve the problem.

Since 2007 the community has been calling for a decent management of the flats.

They nicknamed the project "Gateway to hell".

In 2007 they marched to Parliament to protest against the poor quality of their houses, where about 100 residents submitted grievances, including photographs of faults, to the Rental Housing Tribunal.

"There was also a problem in September 2006 that anybody's keys could open anyone else's flats," residents complained at the time.