More than years after taking office, President William Ruto is still grappling to find the right sale pitch for his government’s affordable housing agenda.

Just a week ago, the Lands, Housing and Public Works Ministry invited Kenyans to select houses from 4,888 units under the widely unpopular programme.

“The initiative, part of the government’s efforts to address the housing deficit, will see Kenyans start their homeownership journey by paying a deposit for an identified unit that includes provision of a mortgage facility,” said the ministry in a statement.

An open day was held on December 21 in Machakos County. Principal Secretary State Department for Housing Charles Hinga encouraged Kenyans to visit 24 sites across the country where affordable housing units are being put up.

The 4,888 units are a far cry from the 200,000 units the Kenya Kwanza administration pledged to put up annually in its manifesto.

The Affordable Housing Levy (AHL), collected from salaried workers at 1.5 per cent of gross pay, is one of the initiatives the government put in place to achieve this goal.

However, the idea has been a hard sell to many Kenyans. President Ruto has defended the Affordable Housing Levy, saying the programme is meant to create jobs while providing affordable housing affordably, hence killing two birds with one stone.

However, in his State of the Nation address this year, the President also said the push for affordable housing in rural areas would safeguard agricultural land.  

“To protect agriculture and food security from the effects of uncontrolled land fragmentation, urbanisation must be planned and controlled, and the affordable housing programme is, therefore, a vital component of integrated land use planning and development programme that we are implementing throughout the country, in every county,” said President Ruto.

“If you look around, you will witness the signs of our urban future; land sizes are becoming smaller, as the population grows in rural agricultural areas,” he said.

So far, the President said, the programme has provided 164,000 jobs.

In November last year, just one year into office, the programme had provided 50,000 jobs. These include bricklayers, artisans, engineers, surveyors, electricians, and carpenters, among others.

The next hurdle for the government, however, is to entice uptake, especially for units in rural areas in the face of rural-urban migration. Kenya’s urbanisation rate is about 4.0 per cent annually.

A report by the Auditor General on National Housing Corporation, the state housing agency, for the year ended June 2023, indicated an inventory balance of Sh1.3 billion, including Sh1.276 billion of unsold houses held by the corporation.

“As previously reported, despite some of the projects having been completed several years ago, the houses have remained unsold and hence they continue to be reported as inventories,” says the report. 

It adds that the corporation management has scaled up engagement with county governments, Saccos, Kenyans in the diaspora and other relevant institutions to market the unsold houses.

“Although the corporation is currently renting out some the houses with a value of Sh843,032,824 to housing schemes as it awaits the sale of the houses to potential buyers, the remaining houses worth Sh432,697,190 remained unoccupied,” the report says. “ In the circumstances, the corporation may not have obtained value for money for the schemes implemented at Sh1,275,730,014 included under inventories.”

State House Spokesperson Hussein Mohamed, however, refuted these findings, stating that the units referenced in the report existed before September 2022 when President Ruto took office, insisting that they are in no way related to AHP.

However, AHP was part of the Big Four Agenda as contained in former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s manifesto when he ran for office for the second term in 2017 and was deputised by President Ruto then.

It was also part of the Jubilee administration between 2013 and 2017 which was headed by former President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto as his deputy in their first term.

It is during this period that the National Housing Corporation unveiled an elaborate plan to put up 10,000 housing units in line with the Jubilee manifesto. The plan was to sell the units at Sh5 million, below the then Sh7 million market price.

Mr Mohamed said since September 2022, some 103,000 affordable housing units have been launched and are in various stage of construction.

He noted that considering the fact that previous government housing programmes were not directly aligned with the Affordable Housing Program, the Kenya Kwanza administration, under the leadership of President Ruto, is actively working to review and improve the uptake of such programmes.

“For example, in the case of NHC projects, it is true that the project launched in 2013 proved to be expensive at a cost of Sh7 million per unit prompting low uptake. The NHC has since converted this to a Tenant Purchase Scheme (TPS) and has since improved uptake,” said Mr Mohamed in a statement.