Inside huge cash withdrawals from affordable housing kitty

Boma Yangu new Mukuru housing etate [File-Standard]

The government has clarified reports that contributors to the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP)  have withdrawn about Sh2.56 billion by the end of June this year, which is nearly half of Sh5.47 billion mobilised on its  Boma Yangu platform.

The clarification comes a few days after a local daily reported that the money in refunds had been withdrawn by Kenyans, who had signed up on the platform to save towards owning houses.

The report, which relied on Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu's report, said Principal Secretary for Housing Charles Hinga had misused the word refunds with voluntary claimable savings.

“Voluntary savings on Boma Yangu are primarily savings by a prospective buyer toward their own deposit — the minimum of five per cent of a home's value required for purchase,” said Hinga during a press conference at Ardhi House on Wednesday.

“Affordable housing units take time to build, and the scheme was designed so that, rather than being overwhelmed by the full deposit at the point of completion, an ordinary Kenyan can put money away steadily over the construction period.”

The platform, he said, operates on a two-wallet tier structure with the savers first accumulating funds in their savings wallet.

“To be considered for allocation of a unit, the saver sweeps their savings into their deposit wallet for the specific scheme they wish to buy into. If the saver is allocated a unit, the deposit is remitted to their financier as part of the home purchase transaction,” explained Hinga.

“If the saver is not allocated, for example where demand for a scheme exceeds the units available, the money is returned to the saver's wallet so that they can select another scheme and enter allocation again.”

 At all times,  he said the saver may take their money out quickly, either as cash for their own use or as a deposit where they need it, and this was enabled so by the government deliberately, which designed the scheme with an unconditional statutory exit as per  Section 52(4)(a) of the Affordable Housing Act, 2024.

The Act, he said, guarantees every voluntary saver the right to withdraw their savings on 90 days' notice, saying a withdrawal under this design is not a rejection of the Program but the scheme keeping its promise.

Hinga explained that in the platform's transaction records, movements of money out of savings wallets, including sweeps into deposits that complete a home purchase, have been recorded under the single label of “refunds.”

“A deposit applied to the purchase of a home is not a refund in any conventional sense: the saver has not exited the program; the saver has bought the house,” Hinga said.

“The article's headline figure aggregates these two fundamentally different transactions under one word, and every conclusion it draws inherits that error.”

The PS said the full data over the same period shows the opposite, adding that since the audit cut-off of May 2025, cumulative savings on the platform have more than doubled, from Sh2.47 billion to Sh5.47 billion; registered users grown from 1.02 million to 1.26 million Kenyans, noting that and at any given time, about 30 percent of registered users are actively saving toward units they wish to own.

“The distinction set out above transforms the meaning of the growth in “refunds” itself. Of the approximately Sh1.77 billion by which the recorded “refunds” figure grew over the period, deposits applied toward home purchases account for approximately Sh1.76 billion, while refunds as conventionally understood(that is savers withdrawing their money as cash), grew by approximately Sh15.1 million from Sh788.2 million to Sh803.3 million,” said Hinga.

He said 300,000 units are under construction in various parts of the country and by the end of this year, around 45,000 will be released.

New AHP Chief Executive Joe Mutuku said from January to December next year, 15,000 units will be handed over to the owners.

The demand is so huge that for Mukuru flagship project alone, we have received 24,000 applications against the 13,264 units available. That is nearly two citizens for every single home. It tells me that Kenyans are hungry for quality, security and for a government that delivers tangible results,” said Mutuku.

“Let me be equivocal; we are not merely erecting concrete and steel, we are laying the foundation for a new social contract between government and citizen.”

Mutuku said they are committed to delivering the 45,000 homes to Kenyans who have waited for too long.

The chief executive assured homeowners who have already started to acquire sectional titles that once they get them, the houses belong to them forever and even if the government changes, they will still own them.

He said the process to get sectional titles is a continuous one, and already some owners have received them.