Government should plan better on housing agenda

President Uhuru's big four agenda focuses on manufacturing, health care, housing and food security as his legacy projects. [File, Standard]

The government’s Big four Agenda has been, for some time now, subjected to scrutiny by pundits. However, the agenda on affordable housing should be applauded. In my previous article on affordable low cost housing, I held the view that to bridge the housing deficit, we needed government leading role to drive the industry stakeholders. Setting this as one of the key agenda for this government will steer the industry attention towards realisation of this elusive deficit. While this move by the government is plausible, I remain skeptic on whether the target of 500,000 housing units, if realised in the next five years, will bridge the housing deficit gap. 

The Kenyan annual housing deficit according to statistics is at 200,000 units against an annual supply of 50,000 units. The World Bank housing report released in April 2017, dubbed Housing; Unaffordable and Unavailable, estimates that there are accumulated housing deficit of two million units, and nearly 61 per cent of urban households live in slums. This is aggravated by an urbanisation rate of 4.4 per cent equivalent of 500,000 thousand new city dwellers every year. Considering this, and everything remaining constant, there will be about one million housing deficit and about 2.5 million new city dwellers in the next five years. Juxtapose this against the government target of 500,000 units in five years. While for sure this government initiative will halve the annual housing deficit, it may not address the need of new city dwellers. This is one of my greatest concerns.