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Cape Town is pricing its own people out of the city
Cape Town’s rental crisis is about power, not the market
If you live in Cape Town, you do not need a spreadsheet or an economist to explain what is happening to rent. You feel it when the email arrives announcing an increase that swallows your grocery budget. You feel it when you move further from work again, or when your child studies in a damp room, because that is all you can afford near campus. You feel it in the early mornings and late nights lost to commuting.
For many Capetonians, the rental crisis is no longer a policy discussion. It is a daily stress that reshapes family life, work life, and mental health.
That is why the recent exchange between Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and activist Kiasha Naidoo struck such a nerve. The Mayor’s argument against rent control leans heavily on one idea: do not interfere with the market; just build more housing. Naidoo’s response cut deeper. She named what many residents already know but rarely hear acknowledged. This crisis is not natural, and it is not inevitable.
It is political.
When economic theory meets lived reality
On paper, the argument sounds calm and rational. Increase supply, and prices will eventually stabilise. But on the ground, that promise rings hollow.
Cape Town’s skyline has been filled with cranes for years. New developments keep rising. Yet rents continue to climb. The reason is simple and uncomfortable. Much of what gets built is designed for profit first, not affordability. Developers follow returns. Investors chase appreciation. Short-term rentals respond to tourism. Remote work brings global money into local neighbourhoods.
None of that is illegal. But without strong protection for residents, it becomes pressure that pushes ordinary people out of their own city.
When the Mayor says do not interfere, many residents hear something else entirely. Adapt or be left behind. The city will not adapt to you.
Why rent control keeps coming up
Rent control is often treated like a dirty word in political debate. In reality, when people raise it, they are usually asking for something far more basic. Stability. Predictability. A sense that the city is on their side.
Dismissing the idea outright matters because it signals whose interests are being prioritised. For tenants facing sudden increases and insecure leases, it feels like their fear is being brushed aside in favour of protecting property values.
Rent regulation is not a silver bullet. But refusing to even discuss it deepens the anger already simmering across the city.
A city run as an asset, not a home
Cape Town markets itself as a global destination, a lifestyle city, and a place to invest. That image has value. But when global attractiveness becomes the main measure of success, residents become collateral damage.
A city is not truly successful because property prices rise. It is successful when the people who keep it running can live in it with dignity. When nurses, teachers, service workers, and students can afford to be close to work and study. When family time is not eaten away by distance.
Pushing workers further out does not create prosperity. It exports the costs onto the poor through longer commutes, worse health outcomes, and fractured communities.
Power, not inevitability
At the heart of this debate is power. In a tight housing market, landlords and developers hold it. Tenants absorb the shock. Waiting for affordability to arrive naturally is not policy. It is surrender.
That is why Naidoo’s framing matters. Rents are not just prices. They are power relations shaped by choices made at the city level.
What a different approach could look like
A city serious about affordability does not rely on hope. It uses the tools already available.
That means releasing public land quickly for mixed-income and affordable rental housing. It means enforcing meaningful inclusionary housing in new developments. It means taxing vacancy and speculation so that hoarding becomes uncomfortable. It means regulating short-term rentals where they displace long-term residents. It means strong tenant protections, from inspections to mediation and minimum standards.
Housing should be treated like infrastructure, as essential as water or electricity.
Turning frustration into change
Across Cape Town, the frustration is shared, even if it looks different in different suburbs. From Mitchells Plain to Observatory, from Khayelitsha to the Southern Suburbs, the pressure is the same.
Anger is not the problem. Disorganisation is.
Change will not come from one speech or one leader suddenly changing their mind. It will come when unaffordability becomes politically expensive. When residents demand timelines, organise locally, challenge councillors, and vote with intention.
Cape Town can be globally attractive and locally liveable. But only if its people refuse to accept that nothing can be done.
This is not just a housing debate. It is a question of who the city is really for.
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Source: IOL
Featured Image: News24
