Cape Town's housing crisis 'a success story' that leaves many residents displaced

“Rising rental prices and rising property prices is a symptom of a successful city,” says Hill-Lewis. “The opposite is Johannesburg, where people who’ve poured their life savings into their houses now can only get half for them.”

The mayor calls Cape Town’s growth a win, but for many it’s a success story they can’t afford to be part of. With many Capetonians living on modest monthly incomes, rising rent and property costs are pushing ordinary residents further from the city centre.

“I can’t afford to live in the city. I can’t afford to live on the seaboard,” Hill-Lewis admits. “I don’t feel entitled to do that. I make my choices accordingly. That’s why I live in the northern suburbs, where I grew up.”

Hill-Lewis reveals the City’s housing backlog now sits at about 600,000 homes, worsened by a sharp decline in national housing grants and a migration boom of about 100,000 families from Gauteng in the past two years. The result: too many people chasing too little housing.

“There’s no way that 100,000 new housing units are being built by the private sector. That means greater competition for the same supply of housing and so the price goes up. That’s normal economic supply and demand.”

The Mayor says the City is cutting red tape to fast-track development and leaning on small-scale “micro-developers” in townships to help fill the gap.

“The most exciting work happening in Cape Town is in micro-development. Township developers who are actually building affordable housing way faster than the government ever can. We’ve enabled them in Cape Town for the first time in South Africa.”

Still, for those priced out of their neighbourhoods, “success” feels like displacement. The discussion forces a deeper look at who benefits from the city’s boom and who’s being left behind in the process.

The mayor admits that Cape Town’s crime rate and transport issues are major obstacles to progress. The City has invested in hundreds of law enforcement officers and major public transport projects, but without functioning rail and national coordination, Hill-Lewis says it’s an uphill battle.

“We had a functional rail system and then it was destroyed, and that is an absolute crying shame that that was ever allowed to happen. So now it is slowly but surely being rebuilt. In the interim, we are building our bus system. We’re expanding it. We have the largest public transport project in the country right now under construction, a R7-billion bus lane expansion to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain.”

From rent to railways, this episode lays bare the contradictions of a City that calls itself “successful” while its residents face crime, a housing crisis and ranks among the world’s most congested cities. Perhaps the city is better run than other South African metros, but the bar is incredibly low. DM

For more context on Cape Town’s housing crisis and what real solutions might look like, catch Politically Aweh’s episode on Cape Town’s Rent Crisis Explained here. 

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