Why State's slum eradication remains a tall order

Mathare slum in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

Recently, residents of the Mukuru slums in Nairobi, who had subscribed to the affordable housing programme, cried out that the units they paid deposits for were being allocated to strangers.

This is the reality with the affordable housing project - creating new communities where none existed before.

Social media posts showed personal vehicles at parking lots of the housing units in question, which made many question whether the real beneficiaries from the slums have upgraded their lives to that of the middle class.

More so, was the project supposed to eradicate the slums or the slum dwellers? Personal finance expert Peter Mukiri says the government's effort to eradicate slums won't work no matter how noble it sounds.

 "If the government had borrowed a leaf from economies ahead of us that tried to solve the slum eradication issue but couldn't manage, then it would have adopted a different approach instead of creating vertical slums where shanties existed," he says

 Brazil is an example where he says the Sao Paulo government tried to get rid of slums known as favelas with no success - same with the South African government.

The Kenyan slum dwellers, for example, would first need to upgrade their economic status to fit in the new houses. If that slum dweller pays like Sh2,000 to a landlord, moving to a unit where monthly rent is between Sh5,000 and Sh8,000 is like a lifestyle change.

"And that slum dweller is earning an average of Sh500 per day hustling around estates," he says.

 Add that in the affordable housing unit, that slum dweller will now have metered water, power and service bills to pay.

 "In the slums, you'll see water is cheaper than the metered version. The slum dweller pays like Sh20 for a jerrican, and water is bought as the need arises. Then his electricity bill is near negligible as he depends on illegally tapped power or pays something small to those in illegal power distribution to stay on the grid. Then there's nothing like a garbage collection fee if the method of disposal is the anyhow one"

 According to architect Maina Kamau, it's hard for the government to tell who the genuine slum dwellers are. "That's why it's not surprising to hear strangers benefiting ahead of the bona fide slum dwellers," he says.

Slum landlords can benefit from units more than their tenants, as they could have been in the place for ages, unlike tenants who can choose to vacate to better places when their financial situations change.

"That's what complicates issues. The government should have approached area chiefs and elders to determine if beneficiaries are genuine cases; otherwise, it'll prefer those with a salary for ease of housing levy deductions, rather than that mama mboga paying through M-Pesa and saves with no financial institution."

Like during the previous administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta, where those who benefited from housing units let out their units and returned to slums, he foresees a similar situation with the current project.

"Let's say that a beneficiary earns around Sh5,000 per month, and the monthly rent of that unit is Sh3,500, and we've not factored in other expenses; does it make sense to dwell in that unit?" he poses.

For Mr Mukiri, this amounts to the government's failure to upgrade the beneficiaries' incomes first, but he wants to upgrade their status to that of a middle-income class first.

"If the beneficiary sees someone willing to pay rent of Sh10,000 for that unit, he'll gladly let it out and move back to the slum. He's making money from his unit, or the unit is paying for itself in this arrangement," he says.

During President Uhuru Kenyatta's era, beneficiaries of the slum upgrading housing project were said to be selling their units for as little as Sh70,000 and moving back to the slums.

And this is the headache the current administration will grapple with. It'll be eradicating slums on one end to put up storied buildings, but slums will expand on the other end as affected dwellers prop up more shanties.

The units won't be commensurate with their incomes, defeating the logic of moving into them.

Then their customers aren't where the units are. That slum dweller could be one who leaves for the Industrial Area around 5am to make that long trek to work, defeating the logic of why one would need a unit far removed from the ease of convenience to their workplaces.

 "Even if a beneficiary is allowed to establish a kibanda to run business at the ground level of an affordable housing unit but lives on 12-floor of the same building, don't expect their old customers to come looking for them. A new perception will have already coalesced that the beneficiary has got a new class of customers, because those units will give the outlook of middle-class dwellers if pictures of vehicles in the parking lot are anything to go by."

 The government would have first upgraded the economic status of slum dwellers through job creation, before thinking of upgrading them into middle-class tenants. How do you expect someone who earns Sh300 on a bad day to be a tenant in a Sh5,000 monthly unit? This is what will see new communities being created in the name of eradicating slums and their dwellers.