Foreign visitors vs locals — is Hill-Lewis finally addressing Cape Town’s inner-city housing squeeze?

Cape Town’s draft Short‑Term Letting By‑Law reclassifies many Airbnb-style rentals as commercial, raising rates and requiring registration — but will it free inner‑city housing for local renters?

“On the short-term rental question, there is one thing that I do agree with,” said Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town’s executive mayor, in a wide-ranging interview with Daily Maverick in October 2025. “The fact is, if you are buying five apartments and letting them out full time, whether through Airbnb or whoever, you are running a hotel. And there I fully agree with those who have said that there must be an equal playing field between those businesses and hotel businesses.”

The broader context for our question, as intimated in the interview’s title — No place for old locals, Part 2 — was the unprecedented uptick in recent years of foreign property investors in Sea Point and the City Bowl, which, according to our reporting, was driving prices beyond the reach of ordinary Capetonians and removing long-term rental stock from the market.

The Sea Point Promenade. (Photo: David Harrison)