How poverty is pushing Kenyans to live in danger zones

Buildings stand on the bank of a river near a cleared ground after the search of both dead and survivors of the Huruma tradgedy. [PHOTOS: Elly McOngare and File/ Standard]

Perez Tuitai is a 35-year-old father of one, who is soon to be father of two. Like thousands of others, Tuitai left his home in West Pokot five years ago to look for greener pastures in the big city and has, for the last two years, worked at a clothes shop in town where pay depends on the day’s sales. On a good day, he takes home Sh400. For Tuitai, such good days are few and far between.

On Wednesday, April 27, Tuitai opted to move his family out of a house in Huruma where he was paying a monthly rent of Sh3,500 to an adjacent one where the rent was Sh1,500 for a single room. Little did he know that the building he was moving into would come tumbling down three days later.

“The heavy rains prevented me from going home early. My wife and child had visited some friends away from home and were also unable to get home due to the downpour. By the time we were making our way home, the building had collapsed,” says Tuitai.

Tuitai and his family are among scores of former residents now housed at a nearby public facility. They are among the lucky ones who escaped with their lives.

The rescue bulldozers have since gone quiet after close to 50 people were confirmed dead following the tragedy. The avalanche of press conferences where everyone claimed ‘it wasn’t me’ have also subsided while the dignitaries who braved muddy puddles to ‘console’ with grieving residents have retreated to their usual cocoons.

Media attention has again shifted to ravaging floods in other parts of the country. Huruma has moved on. Except for those affected by the collapse, life is back to normal. But is it?

Experts in the built environment have been quick to pass the blame as to why the Huruma tragedy happened. They even know how it would have been avoided. But there is a bigger picture, one that goes beyond what happened in Huruma.

It is how the unforgiving hand of poverty has conspired to ensure that millions of Kenyans continue living in houses that are ticking time bombs.

This was well exemplified on Saturday, April 30, the morning after the Huruma flat’s collapse. An apprehensive President Uhuru Kenyatta passed by the site immediately after his arrival from Nanyuki where he had attended a meeting on wildlife conservation. The President looked up, saw adjacent buildings and ordered for their evacuation, fearing that they too could collapse at any time.

“I have instructed officials in the interior ministry to immediately move people from houses at a risk of collapsing,” he announced.

What followed, however, were outright rebuffs from residents who said they would not move an inch owing to their economic status.

“Yeye atuhamishe kama anataka tuondoke. Nafanya kazi ya kibarua na sina hela za kulipia nyumba ingine (The President should help us move out of here. I am a casual labourer and cannot afford to pay for a house anywhere else),” said a dejected resident.

Others claimed they have lived in the condemned buildings for years, adding that they had even paid the following month’s rent and could not afford to see the money go to waste.

Tuitai, mentioned on the outset that no one with means to live in a better house would opt for these poorly constructed houses. No father, he says, would in his right mind keep his family in a building he knows could come crashing down.

“I opted to move to a house that was Sh2,000 cheaper because I could not afford higher rents charged in the well built homes in other parts of the city,” he says.

The script is the same in another suburb that has always hit the headlines as far as poorly constructed houses are concerned.

Living in Nairobi Pipeline’s Plot 10 is not for the fainthearted. Here, people are packed like sardines in flats that reach to the high heavens. Again, residents here say they have few alternatives when it comes to choosing residential areas.

John Odinga, a local village elder, has lived here for more than 20 years. He knows the structures were not build with a keen eye on safety. He says the area’s drainage is so bad that one needs to wear rubber boots even in scorching heat. Still, he is not about to move out.

“We live like cows in a paddock. There is no piped water since the county government disconnected the same for non-payment of bills. We have to make do with salty borehole water,” he says.

Odinga says the area's housing problem was orchestrated by tycoons who campaigned for demolition of the former iron sheet houses that were not in any danger of collapsing.

“They wanted to build on this land. Here a bedsitter rents for Sh4,500 a month. We pay the rent through bank accounts. The landlords stay in affluent places such as Runda and hardly ever comes here even if something terrible happens,” says Odinga.

“What if an order to move out of the area was issued?” I ask him. “You will move out and go to yet another unscrupulous developer with similar houses. The cycle of poverty would continue.”

However, according to Public Works Principal Secretary - Paul Mwangi, the notion that poverty has narrowed residents’ options of finding better housing exists only in their minds. He says it is their desire to save a few coins by living in dangerous zones that is at the core of the problem.

“Imagine a person who came straight from the rural area and put up with his cousin in Korogocho. Then he managed to get a low cost but badly built house in Huruma. What matters to him is that at last he can live in his own flat, a ‘permanent’ house with running water and perhaps electricity. For him it is the poverty of the mind, putting anything ahead of his intellect,” say Mwangi.

In addition, Mwangi says the trend in which Kenyans have come to expect the government to sort out all their troubles is yet another reason why they are willing to stay put in condemned buildings.

“When I visited Huruma residents after the tragedy, their foremost concern was if the Government will help them get back their deposits already paid to landlords before moving out of condemned buildings. They don’t see themselves as being responsible for their own acts of omission or commission,” he says.

And so the story continues. Greedy developers in collusion with equally gullible public officials will keep building inferior structures.

Poor Kenyans in search of cheap accommodation will flock to these death traps. When will the cycle end?