Beware, sly caretakers on the prowl

For the past three months, Lillian Nafula has been staying at a friend’s house. Nafula, who is in her mid-20s, came back from her December holidays to find her house locked with two more padlocks. The caretakers refused to listen to anything she said.

“I had not paid rent for one month and had planned to clear the amount when I returned from upcountry,” said Nafula. The caretakers denied her access to her belongings, including clothes.

“The two caretakers demanded I clear the rent arrears, two-months rent and an extra amount to ‘make sure I learnt my lesson and did not default again,’” she said. The two, who “manage” the apartment in Roysambu, Nairobi, also denied her access to the landlord to explain her case.

Many tenants in the country share the same experience.

Nafula’s predicament. In many cases, tenants in major towns like Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, have to deal daily with stubborn, conniving and sometimes, vindictive caretakers. These are people employed by landlords and housing companies to act as liaisons and to make sure tenant issues are dealt with.

“Many people are suffering at the hands of caretakers through harassment and criminal acts,” said Ephraim Murigo, secretary general of Urban Tenants Association of Kenya (UTAK), who added that he was presently handling a tenant-caretaker case. “It is widespread and tenants report to our organisation very often but rarely report to the police because they do not want to be evicted. Most people opt to move out rather than report,” said Murigo.

LANDLORD MONEY

Nafula said she found it challenging to report the matter because she owed the landlord money.

“Caretakers are not recognised by law and they are thus unregulated,” said Justus Munene, former vice-chairman of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya (ISK) and the managing director of Daytons Valuers Limited.

“They are not trained and most are employed on friendly, unofficial terms. That is where the problem lies.”

Caretakers are rarely mentioned in the media nor do their actions elicit much coverage. Apart from few occasions like when the building superintendent of an apartment near Junction Mall testified that terror mastermind Samantha Lewthwaite, commonly known as the White Widow, once lived there, caretakers are confined to supremacy wars within individual buildings.

There are very few documented cases and literature on caretakers is hard to come by.

“There is no caretakers union because most of them are the landlord’s relatives or cheap labour,” said Murigo. “They are also controlled by individual landlords with individual demands and that is why they seem institutionally unrecognised.”

The accusations caretakers face border on both petty and serious crime. One writer with a popular magazine in Nairobi is still convinced that a caretaker of a building he once lived in in Nairobi’s Eastlands organised for his house to be burgled. The entertainment writer, whose work schedule ensured he almost always got home late, came to find his door slightly open, with the caretaker telling him that everyone had assumed he (the writer) was around.

“He casually stated that no one had seen or suspected anything like theft since I liked having my door open when I was indoors,” said the writer, who has since moved to South B.

“He must have been involved as I had refused his frequent money requests. The fact that I sometimes left my keys with him if I expected a visitor while I was away meant he could have made a copy.”

Munene explained that not much can be done whenever caretakers commit crime since they can easily disappear.

SABOTAGE

“I know of cases where caretakers have beaten up tenants and moved to another county. Some have been accused of killing and we all know how they can easily organise robberies,” he said. “But on very few occasions will you hear about a conviction.”

Some caretakers are known to sabotage the lives of tenants to settle scores. With power and control over important services like water, electricity and access to the building, some tenants have been frustrated to the point of moving out. But this is against the law.

“Most of the things they do are criminal and should be reported to the police. When you, as a tenant, are evicted at 3 am, you should report that to the police,” said Murigo. “The caretakers represent the landlord and by extension, they should both face charges.”

Legal experts say most of the complaints made by tenants are actually criminal. Assault, whether verbal or physical, and harassment, should be reported to the police. They say most people do not report such cases because of ignorance.

Eviction at ungodly hours is still a thorny issue since The Eviction and Resettlement Bill, 2012, has not become law. Some landlords and their caretakers take advantage of the lacuna to harass tenants.

There are also cases of sexual harassment, with caretakers stalking their female tenants and punishing them for turning down their advances. “Why would a caretaker insist on coming in the evening to give me bills when he could simply slip them under the door?” asked Nafula.

Stubborn male tenants will always find their taps dry or garbage not collected. “We sometimes resort to these crude methods to remind the tenants that we are in charge,” said Peter Kairu, a caretaker of a residential flat in Kiambu. He refers to himself as ‘Manager’ and says: “There are some tenants who are very rude and condescending, treating us like we are their employees. What they forget is that a caretaker has so much power because he knows everything that takes place in the building. We even create temporary water rationing to draw attention to ourselves.”

The four-storey building that collapsed in Nairobi’s Makongeni at the beginning of the year brought another element to the fore. With the building developing deep cracks and appearing unstable, the caretaker was accused of taking too long to pay back the deposits that tenants were owed, leading to some not being able to leave before it collapsed.

“In such a scenario, you might find that it was the landlord who was delaying the repayments and as such, not the caretaker’s fault,” said Kairu. “We are answerable to the tenants, but our orders come from the landlords, who are sometimes servicing loans and are cash-strapped.”

Murigo concurs, saying that caretakers are merely landlord mouthpieces.

“Caretakers are just representatives of the landlords and anything they say should be viewed as the landlord speaking,” he said. “Tenants should learn to take them merely as messengers.”

Sammy Kamau, a caretaker in an apartment building in Kahawa Wendani in Nairobi said that tenants have so many expectations and demands and you need a sober mind to deal with them.

“For example, most of my tenants are students from a local university who are always holding parties and coming and going anytime they want so the place is always abuzz,” said Kamau. “These students play very loud music, which some tenants are not comfortable with but everyone has paid rent so everyone has a say.”

Kamau said he has been blamed for not being vigilant, leading to theft, an accusation he has distanced himself from.

“I do not even know who some of the real tenants are because these students can be as many as six in the same bedsitter! With such living arrangements, things will eventually get lost,” he added.

Some caretakers are also known to run extortion schemes, prying on their tenants.

Coming up with schemes about sick or dead relatives, some are known to collect donations that can amount to a middle-level manager’s salary.

Generous tenants are said to get preferential treatment and can actually order caretakers around.

“Yes, we have favourites...those tenants who treat us well,” said Kairu. “They get preferential treatment and we are even proud to serve them.”

Kamau concurs that caretakers execute some fishy financial schemes and they also keep secrets about tenants: “We are custodians of so many dirty secrets that people try so much to hide,” Kairu. “That is why some caretakers are very good at arm-twisting the tenants.”

Conniving caretakers are not restricted to densely populated neighbourhoods, they also operate on a large-scale in gated communities and high-end estates.

“This is where crimes are stage-managed and are more violent and devastating,” he said. “No robbery can take place without inside information in these places.”

At the moment, caretakers can basically do anything and almost get away with it, with landlords quick to distance themselves from their actions.

“The only solution is to regulate and formalise caretakers’ work. ISK can accommodate them under the technician members cadre, where their training will be standardised and at least there will be a body they are answerable to,” said Munene. “Otherwise, there is no end to the mess.”