Cape Town's Housing Crisis Intensifies as Middle Class Faces Airbnb and Digital Nomad Backlash
Social media platforms are flooded with complaints about American and German accents, foreign property buyers, and a proliferation of Airbnb listings, all blamed for driving up housing costs in Cape Town. Earlier this month, graffiti on the Sea Point promenade bluntly stated: "Digital nomads go home! Now!" This sentiment reflects growing frustration among residents as the city's housing crisis reaches the middle class.
Soaring Property Prices and Rents
Over the last five years, property prices in Cape Town have surged by 31%, according to official data. This increase is double the rise observed across South Africa's seven other metropolitan municipalities. Rents grew by 5-7% last year, also exceeding the national average, as reported by The Africanvestor, a property research firm. The city's appeal as South Africa's best-run urban area, located in a province with the country's lowest unemployment rates, has attracted people from all income levels. This includes "semigrants" from other parts of the nation, foreign and local retirees, and digital nomads.
Historical Inequalities and Infrastructure Shortfalls
Cape Town has grappled with a housing crisis long before middle-class residents began feeling the pinch. Like much of South Africa, the geographic inequality of apartheid persists more than three decades after the end of white minority rule. Townships, where non-white people were forcibly relocated from the 1960s, remain predominantly non-white and impoverished. Informal settlements have expanded rapidly. Between 2001 and 2022, the city's population grew by 65% to 4.8 million. By September 2024, over 400,000 individuals were on the waiting list for social housing, according to the most recent city government data, while 18.8% of residents lived in informal housing.
Ivan Turok, a professor at the University of the Free State who has studied housing in Cape Town, noted that the city historically neglected infrastructure and services for poorer newcomers. He explained, "There was an historically somewhat conservative mentality, on the part of civic leaders, that Cape Town is an attractive and desirable city and will be spoiled with large-scale growth. That's changing now, because the city recognises that it's inevitable."
Government Response and Affordable Housing Efforts
Jean-Marie de Waal Pressly, a spokesperson for the city government, highlighted that more land has been released for affordable housing since Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis took office in November 2021 than in the previous decade, with 12,000 affordable units in the pipeline. "The city is committed to reversing the impact of apartheid spatial planning by bringing jobs closer to people and bringing people closer to jobs," he said. Additionally, the city is introducing a bylaw to ensure short-term landlords pay commercial rather than residential tax rates.
Personal Stories and Racial Tensions
In January, a video of Alexandra Hayes, a 31-year-old freelance operations manager and waitress, went viral. She tearfully explained how she and her daughter faced homelessness after her lease was not renewed because the landlord listed the property on Airbnb. Hayes, who earns around 20,000 rand (£895) per month and is currently staying with friends and family, commented on the enduring inequalities: "When apartheid ended, they never really paid attention to bring up the [historically] non-white areas up to the same standard of the white areas."
Current affairs commentator Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa responded in a TikTok video that garnered almost 700,000 views, stating, "You guys thought you were the exception to the rule. Capitalism doesn't give a damn about what race you are. You might be white, but you are South African." Jaxa added in an interview, "The conversation around housing in Cape Town has been going on for at least 10 years. And we'd get comments from white people: 'Well, if you can't afford to live in the city, you should move to the outskirts.' And if you've been to Cape Town, you know exactly what that means."
Meanwhile, non-white individuals who can afford to live in Cape Town's more desirable neighbourhoods still encounter racism when trying to rent. A Nigerian non-profit worker, residing in Cape Town since 2011, reported long wait times for responses from landlords and estate agents, whereas her Norwegian-Hungarian husband receives far quicker replies. "Being married to a white man, irrespective of his background, has enhanced my profile," she admitted.
Airbnb's Role and Global Context
Much of the middle-class anger over the difficulty of finding affordable rentals is directed at Airbnb. According to advocacy group Inside Airbnb, there are over 26,000 listings in Cape Town, with 82.6% being entire homes. This figure surpasses that of many cities worldwide, including Copenhagen, Lisbon, and Los Angeles. An Airbnb spokesperson addressed the concerns: "Airbnb takes claims about housing affordability very seriously. We are acutely aware of Cape Town's housing challenges, rooted in the city's unique geography, the lasting impact of apartheid-era land dispossession and exclusionary spatial planning." They noted that short-term lets accounted for less than 0.9% of formal housing in Cape Town last year, a proportion that has declined since 2020, and emphasized, "What the evidence consistently shows is that the fundamental problem, globally, is the lack of homes being built to meet increasing housing needs."
