The flipside of affordable housing across many counties

Casual workers offering services at an affordable housing project site in Mukuru, Nairobi. [File, Standard]

Peter Macharia is a contractor based in Nakuru. He runs a firm, Fagilia Contractors, that is involved in constructing buildings.

He has been in the sector for many years and has seen both the positive and the flip sides of the same. Recently, he said the cost of building materials has been rising, especially as demand for affordable housing units grows.

In places where construction of the units is ongoing, he has seen what he calls the irony.

"I've seen a slump in construction activities for individual homes or other commercial use units while the affordable housing project is on an industrial scale," he says.

Another thing he noted is that local hardware stores are not cashing in on the construction craze. The contractor comes to the site with their own materials, denying the business access to local hardware.

"Even timber that can be procured from that local timber yard across the street is ferried from I don't know where." 

Moreover, the contractor comes to the site with their own labourers, bypassing the local jobless youths. He wonders how these construction companies were awarded tenders or what criteria were used to select them.

"There have been rumours that the construction firm undertaking an affordable housing project in my constituency belongs to our area MP or close relatives," he says.

And he could not be far off the mark. Parliament passed the Housing Levy after the legislators were given roles of overseeing the construction of units in their constituencies, and this could explain why these construction companies are linked to them.

Martin Wamburu, a real estate investor who runs an agency in Nyandarua County, wonders if the project was really thought of before the hasty implementation.

"Kenyans are being taxed housing levy, yet the government is struggling to deliver the promised units per year. Can we say the project is having funding issues, going by the low number of units being handed to beneficiaries?" he poses.

He believes the challenge could be high construction costs, translating to fewer units. Though the government is constructing houses on public land, it creates housing problems for others in trying to solve the housing issue in the process.

An example is where we see bulldozers flattening old government units, like recently in Makongeni and compensating the previous tenants very little cash.

The affected are supposed to look for alternative accommodations to pave the way for the housing units. But are they prioritised even in those social housing units?"

Anything to do with government projects, he says, is subject to bureaucratic hurdles, and this could be the reason the government is not delivering on the mandate.

Lengthy approval processes and multiple agencies involved, he says, slow down project implementation.

But do the poor targeted, like in slum eradication, really benefit?  "Low-income earners cannot raise a deposit at a go and make monthly contributions. We saw during the Uhuru Kenyatta regime that the beneficiaries of these slum eradication units would sublet their units and move to shanties in the slum, thus defeating the logic. As high-rise residences erased one end of the slum, it (slum) expanded on the other end," he says.

He notes that with the current slum eradication policy, there's a risk of displacing informal settlements and exacerbating inequality.

Wanyaga Kihara, a civil engineer, says the current developments lack supporting infrastructure like transport, schools, and hospitals. "It makes no logic to see a sizeable concentration of tenants having to travel far in seeking medical attention or taking kids to school or going to markets because no supporting infrastructure is close by," he says.

In some areas where these units are, there are no open spaces that can support sporting activities or other forms of recreation.

Recently, the court ruled that a plot of land where affordable units were coming up in Jevanjee estate was private property.

Mr Kihara says such issues slow down the construction process, and he doesn't rule out communities taking the government to court to stop the construction on public land meant for community good, like schools, hospitals, police stations, and so on.

He, too, wonders, like the rest of Kenyans, if the housing levy is taxation without representation.