Affordable housing is one among the key agenda which President Uhuru Kenyatta has capitalized on to shape his legacy. But he has bad confessions to make on the same.
High cost of land is hurting government’s agenda on delivery of affordable housing units to Kenyans, Housing and Urban Planning Principal secretary Charles Mwaura has said.
Mwaura said although the annual demand for affordable housing for middle and low income earners in the country was 170,000 units, only 1,000 units are built yearly.
He added that the situation had been worsened by official policy misalignments, outdated building code and low number of housing mortgages in the country.
“Land in Kenya is obscenely expensive. A current survey indicates that prices of land in Nairobi are the highest in the continent. This has frustrated the provision of housing and basic infrastructure by the government,” he said.
“50,000 housing units were built last year out of which 49,000 were high-end, leaving the middle and low income groups to scramble for the remaining 1,000 units. Official intervention measures need to be put in place to check the high cost of land,” said the PS.
Mwaura lamented that Kenya lost a Sh25 billion grant from the World Bank for infrastructure development in the country as the government was unable to procure land for the project.
Speaking in Nakuru, Mwaura said although the moratorium on timber logging had the noble intention of conserving the environment, it raised the cost of construction.
“Policies such as the one that suspended timber logging should be realigned in a way that they do not conflict with government’s Big Four agenda. Timber is a very critical component of any building project. It is very expensive to import timber and consequently, this has slowed down housing projects,” he said.