Facing homelessness: The impact of short-term rentals on Cape Town’s residents. Alexander Hayes believed she had finally found a small but safe haven for herself and her two-year-old son.Instead, the reality is different for the 30-year-old single mother, who now faces homelessness after being forced out of her garden cottage in Heathfield. Once a refuge, the property has been earmarked for short-term holiday rentals, leaving Hayes to grapple with an uncertain future.
Hayes is currently moving between friends’ homes, relying on goodwill and spare couches to get by, after being told the cottage she rented would be converted into anAirbnb. “I was living in a little cottage on someone’s premises because it was all I could find,” Hayes told IOL. “The owner said I had to move because they were turning it into an Airbnb.” Hayes’ situation surrounding housing is not an isolated incident.
It forms part of the Mother City’s ever-growing housing crisis, where rising rents, stagnant wages and the rapid spread of short-term holiday rentals are squeezing low- and middle-income residents out of the market. Recent studies and official data paint a bleak picture. According to Statistics SA, housing costs have risen far faster than wages over the past decade, while the City of Cape Town has acknowledged a growing shortfall in affordable rental stock, particularly for households earning below R22,000 a month.
Read Full Article on Cape Argus
[paywall]
Housing advocacy groups say the problem was most acute in well-located suburbs close to transport routes, schools and jobs — the very areas increasingly being snapped up for short-term letting. A 2023 study by the African Centre for Cities found that thousands of long-term rental units in Cape Town have been converted intoshort-term accommodationover the past five years, significantly reducing the supply of affordable housing. The study said the trend was “actively displacing working-class residents” and placing added pressure on informal settlements and overcrowded homes.
[/paywall]
