Cape Town rent activists make case for limits as city rules out rent control
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Cape Town rents have risen nearly 10% in a year to about R12,500 a month, prompting a volunteer collective to campaign for caps on increases, limits on short-term lets and a long-delayed inclusionary housing policy, while the city says it will not intervene.
A volunteer collective in Cape Town has launched a Fair Rent Campaign setting out how it says targeted rent regulation could work in South Africa's most expensive city, as rents continue to climb faster than anywhere else in the country. The Rent Control Group, which held its launch in a church with placards and a sound system, is calling for limits on how much rent can rise rather than a freeze, a cap on the number of short-term rentals operating in the central business district, an affordable housing policy and the activation of a rental law Parliament has already amended.
According to Statistics South Africa data cited by Daily Maverick's Politically Aweh programme, Cape Town property prices have risen about 30% since the end of 2020, well ahead of every other metro, while the average rent in the city is now about R12,500 a month, up nearly 10% in a year. Cape Town also has close to 27,000 Airbnb listings, more than Sydney, Berlin or Barcelona, cities with far larger tourism industries. "What doesn't cost a thing is regulation," said Adam Narain, a member of the group, arguing that the state has tools it is not using.
The City of Cape Town rejects the approach. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has written that rent control "not only fails, it entrenches inequality", and Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews was blunt when asked whether there was any chance of it: "No chance. Market goes where market goes, and market stays where it's enabled." The city attributes pressure on rents to semigration, saying people are moving to Cape Town "in their droves" because it works. University of Cape Town urbanist Professor Edgar Pieterse disagreed, telling the programme that international evidence shows unregulated rental markets allow owners to extract as much rent as possible.
Several instruments already exist on paper. An amendment to the Rental Housing Act names unfair rent increases as an unfair practice but has not been brought into effect, leaving leases as the only constraint on increases. Johannesburg has an inclusionary housing policy, and Stellenbosch adopted one in 2023 and has already approved more than 900 affordable units, while Cape Town committed to drafting its own policy in 2018 and has still not tabled it. The city's draft Short-Term Letting Bylaw would require properties let short-term for more than half the year to pay commercial rates.
The debate is unfolding under legal pressure. In July the Constitutional Court ruled in the Tafelberg case that the city and the Western Cape province had failed to provide affordable housing in and around central Cape Town and ordered both to report back under oath. The Rent Control Group argues that the short-term letting bylaw alone is insufficient, saying that even after paying commercial rates a host can still earn more than double the income of a long-term let.