Affordable housing accountability test as Senate requests audit

President William Ruto launches construction of the 385-unit Wundanyi affordable housing project on September 26, 2026. [PCS]

When the Affordable Housing Programme was conceptualised, it was meant to be one of the flagship projects for the Kenya Kwanza administration with an ambitious plan to construct 250,000 housing units annually.

The target was to have at least 1.2 million units in the market owing to the two million housing shortage in the country.

The project was also intended to get millions of Kenyans out of unfavourable informal settlements and spark a nationwide jobs boom driven by a mandatory 1.5 per cent housing levy deducted from the monthly pay slips of every employed Kenyan and registered business.

Despite being projected as successful by the government, behind the glossy corporate brochures and high-profile Presidential ribbon-cuttings, a storm is gathering with Senators seeking adversarial inquiry into the entire financial and operational architecture of the housing plan.

The Senate, through Marsabit Senator Mohammed Chute, has demanded a comprehensive, project-by-project audit from the Roads, Transportation and Housing Committee, pushing the multi-billion-shilling initiative into a tough accountability limelight.

“The Senate Committee on Roads, Transportation and Housing should address the operational status of County Rural and Urban Affordable Housing Committees in each of the 47 counties, including their composition and respective dates of establishment,” said Chute.

The Marsabit Senator asked to have the house informed on whether the committees have developed five-year affordable housing investment programmes for their respective counties as required under Section 39 of the Affordable Housing Act.

Chute sought to have the committee provide the original cost vis-à-vis the actual project cost for each completed affordable housing unit, the occupation status of the housing units under the project and the criteria used to identify those allotted completed housing units.

What began as a state-led infrastructure campaign is now facing intense legislative scrutiny, with the Senators demanding to know exactly where the billions of shillings collected from heavily taxed citizens are disappearing to.

“We would also like to have the line ministry produce the exact dates of establishment, official composition, and approved five-year strategic roadmaps for every single one of the projects undertaken in the 47 Counties,” said Chute.

Critics argue that without these localised organs, the national government has been playing the role of a distant landlord, imposing generic, pre-fabricated high-rise projects onto communities without meaningful public participation.

When President William Ruto came into office, he was adamant that the Affordable Housing Programme had to work and counties were compelled to take part in the projects through surrendering land.

The result is several housing projects in far-flung counties outside of urban cities (Nairobi, Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa and Eldoret), which have raised questions about uptake.

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna is among the leaders who questioned the logic of building apartments in rural areas such as in Western Kenya where most people prefer to live in homesteads.

"I look at Nairobi Senator, for example; he is one of those people fighting the housing program. You have four million people in Nairobi, and if 70 per cent of them live in a slum, who are you representing?" posed Housing and Urban Development Principal Secretary Charles Hinga in a rebuttal.

Due to this partnership with counties, affordable housing projects have been unveiled in Samburu, Kwale, Bomet, Nandi, Kitui, Busia, Garissa and Isiolo.

In many regions, however, local leadership has been reduced to passive spectators in a programme that fundamentally alters their municipal layouts and land use, with the financial transparency of completed and ongoing projects emerging as a major point of contention.

While the national government has routinely referenced massive numbers, claiming over 262,000 units are under construction nationwide, the actual cost efficiency of these developments remains hidden from public view.

The major selling point of the project has been how affordable it is to acquire a unit. For example, while launching the Pioneer Housing Project in Eldoret recently, one of the beneficiaries spoke of how she got a unit in the Sh5.3 billion project for a Sh32,000 down payment.

The Affordable Housing Programme has three categories of units: social housing, affordable housing and market rate.

For social housing, which is highly subsidised as it aims to eradicate slums, it goes for as low as a Sh3,000 rent-to-own arrangement.

Affordable Housing is for a majority of working-class Kenyans who cannot afford the high mortgage rates offered by banks but can otherwise pay their current rent to own a unit, while market-rate housing is for higher-income individuals whose financial backing is alluring to lenders.

But away from providing housing, the apparent success of the programme, according to the government, has been on job creation.

From the latest figures, the government claims some 640,000 jobs have been created as a result of the programme since 2022. For context, Kenya’s economy creates an average of 800,000 jobs annually according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

However, the government has never come clean on the actual cost versus the final cost of these projects. The government has argued that the 1.5 per cent levy, which collects close to Sh80 billion annually, is the backing that assures developers of offtake once their units are completed and occupied.

Senators are, however, demanding that for every completed site, the housing committee must now expose the original project estimates versus the actual final cost passed on to the taxpayer so that citizens can establish that they are getting value for their money.

Preliminary oversight visits have fueled fears of systemic cost overruns, expensive variations of contracts, and opaque procurement pipelines that favour politically connected mega-contractors over local artisans, which is a matter of great concern.

“The Ministry of Lands, Public Works and Housing must provide an itemised breakdown of estimated budgets against actual expenditures incurred so far in the Affordable Housing Programme,” said Chute.

The Senator sought to know what measures have been put in place to ensure transparency and value for money, including details of the extent to which local communities, county governments and other stakeholders have been involved in the identification of the location and other relevant aspects to ensure that the projects address the unique needs of the Kenyan people

The Affordable Housing Programme was marketed under a populist banner: taking from the formal workforce to provide dignity, sanitation, and ownership to vulnerable, low-income slum dwellers through the Boma Yangu platform.

The Standard has established that some housing blocks were sitting empty or being covertly acquired by wealthy real estate speculators, triggering intense public anger, with Senators demanding a definitive census on the current occupation status of all completed units, alongside the exact criteria used to select beneficiaries.

Human Rights Organisations and Civil Society groups have pointed out that without transparent allocation frameworks, the vulnerable citizens who need these homes the most will be priced out by bureaucratic bottlenecks or deep-pocketed buyers looking for rental income.

The Marsabit Senator also demanded full disclosure of all associated pending bills, funding mechanisms and the identities of every primary contractor engaged under the programme, with the report to be furnished before the Senate.

If the government is accumulating massive debts to private builders despite collecting a dedicated, mandatory housing tax every month, it raises serious questions about the financial health and long-term sustainability of the entire plan.

For years, the narrative surrounding the housing programme was dominated by grand political speeches and impressive architectural renderings, with Politicians led by President William Ruto speaking about how the project will address housing shortages, especially in urban areas.

For the millions of taxpayers watching their hard-earned salaries deducted every month, the upcoming committee report will reveal whether the state is building a fairer Kenya or simply constructing an expensive political monument out of reach for ordinary citizens.