The answer is … no one knows!

A census was done about ten years ago and recorded about 5000 residents. Another census was done early last year, but we are yet to hear the results.

As we recently reported, we carefully counted all the houses in St Francis Bay, including the Links, Cape St Francis and Sea Vista, using Google Earth photos (dated May 2022) and our answer was 2915 houses (out of 4078 residential erven). In addition, there are 566 sectional title units, giving a total of about 3500 residential units. See the table below.

But how many are permanently occupied? No one knows!

(Let’s say anyone who spends more than half the year here is a permanent resident. Or put another way, its anyone who sleeps in St Francis Bay on a typical low season mid-week night)

1. Our guess is that about 40% of the residential units (excluding Sea Vista) are permanently occupied, with on average three residents, ie about 1300 residential units x three residents = about 4000 permanent residents. (many permanent residents are retirees with only two residents per home)
2. Our guess is almost all the Sea Vista houses are permanently occupied, with on average six residents per house (including residents in informal dwellings on the properties), ie 336 x six residents = about 2000 permanent residents (Sea Vista houses were excluded from the first calculation)
3. As we also recently reported, we counted on recent aerial photos of about 900 informal dwellings in Sea Vista. (This figure excludes informal dwellings on Sea Vista formal residential properties). Assuming there are on average four people per informal dwelling, this would mean an additional approximately 3600 permanent residents.

In other words, our guesstimate is that the total permanent resident population is about 10,000, of which about 6,000 live in Sea Vista.

PS 1 This guesstimate could be way out, but it’s probably safe to say that the permanent population to the nearest 10,000 is 10,000!

PS 2 You might wonder whether we had the answer in mind, and worked the figures to arrive back at the answer!

By Richard Arderne