Why homeownership is not a priority for most Kenyans

 

President William Ruto at Lumumba Estate Affordable Housing in Kisumu on Aug 31, 2024. [Michael Mute, Standard]

Owning a house is currently not a priority for many Kenyans, with education topping their priority list as the popularity of the government’s affordable housing programme hits an all-time low.

Despite a sustained push by President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza administration to construct 200,000 housing units annually, the 2024 FinAccess Household Survey released on Tuesday shows housing comes a distant sixth in the hierarchy of needs for a majority of Kenyans.

Interestingly, this is the case when the demographics are divided into the lowest and highest wealth quintiles.

In both demographics, housing does not feature among the top five needs or life priorities as prescribed in the survey.

This hierarchy of needs has been almost unchanged since 2019 even as “putting food on the table” gained prominence in 2021, which can be associated with the aftereffects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy.

In 2024, education is the most pressing life priority at 29.9 per cent followed by putting food on the table (24.5 per cent) and improving business, farm or developing a career (16.7 per cent).

The need to get a job comes fourth at 12.8 per cent, up from 9.3 per cent in 2021 and health (10.4 per cent).

Buying land or building a house or improving a house comes at 4.4 per cent and buying assets like television, refrigerator, and livestock (0.5 per cent) respectively.

“The survey findings indicate that the key priority is education (29.9 per cent), closely followed by putting food on the table (24.5 per cent) and improving business (16.7 per cent),” says the survey authored by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and FSD Kenya.