Airbnb in firing line as Cape Town’s housing crisis catches up with middle class

Social media full of complaints about digital nomads, while waiting list for social housing gets longer Earlier this month, graffiti appeared on the promenade in Sea Point, on Cape Town’s wealthy Atlantic Seaboard: “Digital nomads go home! Now!” Social media is full of complaints about the abundance of American and German accents, foreign property buyers, and properties being listed on Airbnb, all of which are being blamed for soaring housing costs. In the last five years, property prices have risen 31%, according to official data. That was double the rise across South Africa’s seven other metropolitan municipalities. Rents grew 5-7% last year, also above the national average, according to The Africanvestor, a property research firm. Cape Town has suffered from a housing crisis long before middle-class residents started feeling the pinch. Like most of South Africa, the geographic inequality of apartheid persists, more than 30 years since the end of white minority rule. Townships, to where people of colour were forcibly moved from the 1960s, remain poor, and largely without white residents. Informal settlements have mushroomed. Cape Town is generally considered South Africaâ