What Kenya must learn from Singapore's affordable housing model

Gichugu affordable housing project. Kenya's government plans to construct one million affordable housing units by 2027. [File, Standard]

Kenya has proven it can build houses at speed. The harder test is making sure that those houses stay affordable, well managed and dignified.

Drive through Nairobi, Nakuru or Mombasa today and cranes turn over estates once occupied by informal settlements. It is a remarkable feat of political will. But 60 years ago, another young nation faced a similar test, and the choices it made in its first decade continue to shape how millions of its citizens live today. Singapore's answer to its housing crisis offers Kenya not a blueprint to copy, but a mirror in which to see its own programme more clearly.

Before independence, Singapore's housing situation was dire, with most residents crowded into unsafe kampongs and stilt structures. When the country attained self-governance in 1959, the government made housing its first urgent priority. The colonial-era Singapore Improvement Trust had made only modest progress, so in 1960 it was replaced by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), a single, empowered agency with one mandate. The contrast was stark: HDB built more units in its first five years than the Trust had managed in 13. Today, roughly 80 per cent of Singaporeans live in HDB flats, and nine in 10 own their homes.

That success rested on three pillars: Political will, disciplined financing, and legislation with teeth. Singapore's Land Acquisition Act let the government acquire land for housing below market rate, eventually bringing close to 90 per cent of the island's land under state control. A housing programme is only as strong as the legal architecture underwriting it.

Kenya's government has made its own bold promise: One million affordable housing units by 2027, anchored in Article 43 of the Constitution, which enshrines the right to accessible and adequate housing. The Affordable Housing Programme has moved impressively from policy to active construction across all 47 counties. But as it matures, structural gaps are surfacing, gaps that, left unaddressed, risk trading one housing crisis for another: Vertical slums in place of horizontal ones.

Construction has absorbed nearly all attention; what happens after handover has not. Who will manage these estates in so far as service charges, security, waste, shared facilities like lifts and water systems? Singapore's estates are run under clear legal and financial structures that have kept 1960s flats livable 60 years on. Management, not just construction, is what keeps housing affordable over a lifetime.

Delivery in Kenya spans national government, counties, developers, financiers and land agencies, with limited coordination that produce delays and inconsistent implementation. Singapore concentrates on authority instead: One central body owns planning, construction, allocation and estate management end to end, so accountability is never in doubt.

Land acquisition remains a bottleneck too. High costs, slow processes and disputes routinely tangle Kenya's projects in litigation and incomplete documentation. Singapore's centralised, long-term land strategy is vertical zoning, underground development, deliberate interim land use which treats land as a resource to be engineered, not merely allocated.

Financing is the cruellest gap. The households most in need of housing are least able to qualify for it. Credit history, collateral and provable income shut out many low and middle-income earners, and those who do qualify face steep interest rates. Singapore built its system around this problem — grants for eligible first-time buyers, and concessionary loans aimed specifically at genuine housing need rather than the strongest paperwork.

Questions also remain over allocation and transparency - how beneficiaries are chosen, and what stops a well-connected few from acquiring multiple units to rent back to the people the scheme was meant for. Singapore's eligibility criteria are explicit citizenship, income, age, existing ownership with a computerised ballot when demand exceeds supply, and investment buying actively discouraged.

Finally, Kenya still lacks a complete legal framework for estate governance and dispute resolution, and has limited means to monitor occupancy, resident satisfaction, and long-term outcomes once families move in. Singapore treats public housing as a permanent public service, not a one-off delivery target which is subject to continuous monitoring, resident feedback, and programmes to upgrade older flats.

Kenya has already proven it can build. What remains unanswered is harder: whether these houses will still be affordable, well managed and dignified in 20 years, or whether they will quietly decay into the conditions the programme was meant to erase.

The ambition to become the “Singapore of Africa” in housing is compelling, but should be read as an invitation to learn, not a promise to replicate. Singapore's success was forged by circumstances that are largely unrepeatable. What is transferable is the underlying discipline: coordinated institutions, land policy with legal teeth, financing designed for people who actually need it, transparent allocation, and the patience to monitor a housing system for decades, not one election cycle.

Kenya already has the political commitment- Singapore's founders had to build from nothing. What remains is building the legal frameworks and institutions to match it before the cranes finish and the harder, quieter test of governance begins.

Doreen Okwiri, Author is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya