Advice and Opinion

By Dr Jonty Cogger, Attorney at Ndifuna Ukwazi
Planning Law Lecturer, UCT School of Architecture, Planning & Geomatics

Resilience is often celebrated as a desirable characteristic – whether in people, ecosystems, or economies. In environmental science, resilience refers to an ecosystem’s ability to absorb shocks and adapt while maintaining essential functions. A wetland, for example, can absorb excess rainfall and prevent flooding, but only to a point. If overdeveloped or polluted, its ability to perform this function collapses.

The Cape Town Municipal Spatial Development Framework defines resilience as “the capacity of social, economic, and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation.”

The housing market in Cape Town is often perceived as resilient, capable of withstanding economic downturns, shifting demands, and policy and national political changes. But resilience should not be confused with mere survival. The city’s housing market has shown a troubling form of resilience: one that prioritises profit-driven stability over social stability. Instead of adapting to the growing need for affordable housing, it has increasingly excluded low- and middle-income residents, making it clear that market forces alone cannot ensure equitable urban development.

The limits of market-driven resilience

Much like an overburdened ecosystem, Cape Town’s housing market is struggling under the weight of rising rents, speculative development, and stagnant wages. Investors and landlords continue to extract profits, while the city experiences a chronic shortage of social housing. Working-class families are displaced to the periphery, far from jobs and social infrastructure, exacerbating spatial inequality.

Climate change further compounds these challenges. Rising sea levels and extreme weather events threaten coastal areas, disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities. This environmental displacement exacerbates existing inequalities, making the need for affordable and secure housing even more urgent.

A market is only resilient if it serves the people who depend on it. If resilience means that property prices remain high and investment portfolios remain intact, but thousands are forced into precarious living conditions, then we must question whom this resilience benefits.

Take the case of the Daniels family, who have lived in Cape Town for generations. Despite both parents working full-time jobs – one as a teacher, the other in municipal services – they have been unable to find stable housing within the city. Each time they attempt to secure a rental, they are outbid by wealthier applicants, often from outside the country or with the ability to pay a full year upfront. Homeownership is an impossible dream, as banks demand deposits they could never save while paying exorbitant rent. Their struggle is not a personal budgeting failing – it is the inevitable result of an unstable and unaffordable housing market. Without intervention, thousands more will face the same fate.

Regulation as a necessary buffer

Just as environmental law policies exist to protect ecosystems from collapse, regulations must be in place to shield residents from the destabilising effects of unfettered market forces. Rent control, inclusionary zoning, and limits on short-term rentals are not anti-growth measures; they are necessary interventions to ensure that housing markets function for people rather than for profit alone.

A truly resilient housing market must align with the principle of spatial sustainability set out in the Spatial Planning Land Use and Management Act, 16 of 2013 – ensuring that land development is fiscally and environmentally responsible, promotes equitable land markets, limits urban sprawl, and results in viable communities rather than exclusionary enclaves.

Cape Town has the opportunity to rethink its approach to housing markets. If resilience is to be a meaningful concept in urban policy, it cannot merely refer to a market’s ability to persist through financial downturns – it must include the ability of residents to remain in their communities, access stable housing, and thrive.

A city that allows its housing market to push out the very people who sustain its economy and culture is not resilient. The time to intervene is now, before Cape Town’s housing system, like an overburdened ecosystem, reaches the brink of social and economic collapse.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Property Wheel.

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