These are glimpses into organisms made of many parts: multi-unit buildings. With its mix of houses and small-scale buildings, Yeoville is neither entirely of the inner city nor comparable to suburbia. Most non-profit housing institutions won't invest, as only bigger buildings make their intervention sustainable. Instead, small-scale private landlords emerge and provide a vast range of affordable accommodation, either within the fabric of existing blocks of flats or in the surrounding houses and yards. This series of building stories portrays how complex and fragile systems such as multi-unit buildings are lived in and managed.

Helvetia Court, a large Art Deco building, was home to a mix of academics, artists, media professionals and working-class people. From 2007 to 2010, tenants mobilised against the company that had purchased the building. They negotiated for upgrades in exchange for increased rents; they attempted to purchase the building collectively; they approached pro bono lawyers and even the South African Heritage Resource Agency to stop the company from aggressively renovating the building. Nonetheless, the company's use of dirty eviction tactics over several years, and the lack of institutional support, led the residents to leave and their mobilisation to eventually collapse.

PATRICK: I knew a few people but everyone really got together with the eviction issues, at the first meeting when we heard about rent increase … Each one fuelled the other, the most unlikely people would get involved.

ROBERT: It was just getting too dangerous in the building because they’d switch off the lights most of the time; four days out of seven there was no water. There was absolutely no security. They were also locking the building at 8 pm.

CONNIE: The lift was a very scary thing. The light would die so you’d get stuck between the floors. And eventually it just died and people started throwing rubbish in it.

Westminster Mansions, home to a mix of academics, artists, NGO activists and professionals, is a well-maintained building on the Yeoville Ridge, overlooking the city and surrounded by an open space used by Zionist groups and homeless people.