Cape Town’s housing crisis meets Airbnb boom

In this photo, a South African flag banner on the side of an apartment block in the city of Cape Town, South Africa, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

The laughter of children echoed against walls lined with dozens of mattresses in a large, dim room of an illegally occupied building in Cape Town’s bustling and touristy city centre.

A girl was having her hair braided on a stool near neatly placed plastic bags holding the belongings of people who had moved into the abandoned building from across the city.

The property is in the heart of Cape Town, where rental prices are soaring as tourism is booming.

“My income doesn’t allow me to pay Cape Town’s exorbitant rent prices,” said one of the residents, Fundisa Loza, 46.

She moved in with her two daughters, aged 12 and 18, to be near her night-shift work at a call centre in the central business district, about a 20-minute walk away.

Accommodation in the area is listed as starting at around 10,000 rand (nearly US$600) a month for a one-room flat, impossible on Loza’s monthly salary of 8,400 rand.

Airbnbs nearby -- many around the popular District Six Museum dealing with the apartheid-era forced removals of non-white communities to remote and underdeveloped townships -- average around 1,500 rand a night.

“It’s extreme,” Loza told AFP.

Nestled between spectacular mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Town is a growing tourism destination, topping the Telegraph and Time Out magazine’s 2025 rankings of best cities in the world.

It has more short-term rental units than bigger cities such as Barcelona and Berlin, which see up to five times more visitors per year, said Jens Horber from the housing activism group, Ndifuna Ukwazi.

Airbnb boom

In touristy locations like the city centre and the Atlantic seafront, Airbnb listings have increased by 190 per cent since 2022, Horber said.

“Long-term rental units have been converted into tourist accommodation, removing units from the housing supply, raising rental costs and pushing out locals from neighbourhoods where they can no longer afford to live,” he said.

The growth of offers for tourists and “digital nomads”, including in areas where many locals have jobs, has stirred anger and resentment.

Loza’s family lives in one of three occupied buildings on the same street, each home to up to 50 people who are all facing court eviction orders.

She has been registered for years on a waiting list for state-subsidized housing that a city official says already holds around 400,000 names.

“We cannot access homes, we don’t have property,” Loza told AFP. “Why must the city be reserved for certain people?”

According to the Inside Airbnb data project, Cape Town counted more than 26,870 listings on the platform, among the highest in the world and surpassing cities such as Washington DC, Sydney, Toronto, Chicago and Hong Kong.

More than 60 per cent of the city’s Airbnb hosts have multiple listings, it says.

“These hotel-like entities are operating without licences, restrictions, or limits in residentially zoned areas,” said Wits University urban researcher Sarita Pillay Gonzalez, calling for better regulation.

Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York, for example, have imposed stricter Airbnb rules, including caps on annual rental days.

Housing stress

University of Waterloo researcher Cloe St-Hilaire estimated that Cape Town as a whole has lost 1.5 per cent of its housing to Airbnbs, most of which are concentrated in only a few areas of the starkly unequal city.

The figure rose to 26 per cent in Sea Point, a magnet for tourists over the December summer holidays, she said.

For city official Luthando Tyhalibongo, Cape Town’s “housing stress is not foreign-made, investor-made, or Airbnb-made ... It is supply-made”.

Cape Town’s population was more than 4.7 million in 2022, according to census data, nearly 28 per cent up from 2011.

“When a city grows, its housing stock must grow with it,” Tyhalibongo told AFP.

The historically working-class neighbourhood of Woodstock, around five kilometres (three miles) from the touristy Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, is another area under pressure.

Shalner Ching, 45, said younger generations used to live there in houses inherited from their parents but have now rented or sold these properties.

She has abandoned hopes of raising her family near her parents’ home, where she grew up. “I was forced to find a home outside of my community,” Ching said.