Experts say concerns should be addressed

By Joe Kiarie and Kenfrey Kiberenge

To many people, it is ironical some Kibera slums residents are protesting against relocation to upgraded housing units for Sh1,000 a month.

But policy experts say the slum dwellers have a genuine concern. Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, an architect, says the slum dwellers are afraid of uncertainties since they are aware the approach resembles two recent slum upgrading projects in Nairobi, both of which are contentious.

Bitter memories

"One is the Kibera High Rise project –– bordering Soweto –– of the National Housing Corporation (NHC) of the early 1990s. All the units originally intended for the slum dwellers were allocated and/or sold to the middle class," she says.

Huchzermeyer says the housing units were planned for middle class standards from the outset.

"Kibera residents are aware of the same danger with the Kibera-Soweto pilot project plan," she says in a paper, Slum Upgrading Initiatives In Kenya Within The Basic Services and Wider Housing Market: A Housing Rights Concern. She also cites second phase of the Pumwani-Majengo slum redevelopment, also a project of the NHC.

Under the project, slum dwellers who are allocated two-bedroom units were to finance their unsubsidised mortgage repayments of Sh11, 000 by renting out two rooms to other households at Sh4,000 each.

New life

"Officially therefore, single room tenant households are to finance the asset accumulation of a few households selected for homeownership. The remaining mortgage repayment of Sh3,000 is far out of reach of the slum tenants, whose slum rents range between Sh450 to Sh500," Huchzermeyer, a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says.

She says although the financial arrangements for the Kibera-Soweto redevelopment are not finalised, the mortgage payments are to be considerably lower.

"However, the official approach is still to achieve affordability by imposing on the home-owning households the letting of two out of three bed/living rooms in the unit," she says.

Huchzermeyer says due to the existence of a deeply corrupt system of land allocation and profit extraction over the decades, 80 per cent of Kibera residents are tenants of illegal structure owners.

She says residents fear the slum redevelopment will lead to displacement due to non-affordability and corruption.

"Among residents and decision-makers slum upgrading is understood to mean demolition and construction of housing. Therefore considerable awareness raising will be necessary before upgrading can be implemented," she says.

The professor also addresses the issue of non-existence of affordable housing alternative to slums.

She says the Government’s minimum standard of two habitable rooms cannot serve as an affordable alternative since market pressures do not permit a poor family to inhabit two rooms.

"In excess of minimum standards, ‘slum upgrading’ or redevelopment attempts to create home-ownership of two-roomed units for former slum dwellers, then encourages them to let two rooms while occupying the third themselves an official circumvention of standards of habitability," she says.

Way forward

On landlords and landowners, the expert says a lasting solution should be formulated.

She says people living in the slum who have invested meagre savings in small scale rental with relative legitimacy could be identified, compensated fairly, and encouraged to invest in other income generating opportunities.

"Legitimate structure owners should be satisfied their economic stakes will be fairly protected or compensated.

In Nairobi slums, this could be ensured by issuing licences for alternative businesses or assisting several structure owners to pool their capital and invest instead in more expensive, authorised tenements elsewhere," she says.

Huchzermeyer says a loan mechanism for this could enable transition from cutthroat slum landlords to respectable investors/suppliers of adequate rental housing.

 

 

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