Hope amidst hurdles, mixed feelings about affordable housing

Perhaps overexcited to see the president, or happy their parents’ dreams of moving into new houses were coming to life, or just desirous of good cake, tens of children swarmed President William Ruto as he distributed slices of cake during the launch of the new Mukuru Estate (Phase II) on December 18, 2025.

The president had just handed over 4,536 affordable houses to exhilarated locals, who thronged the terraces of the houses and sang away into the night in jubilation. In May of this year, Dr Ruto had handed out 1,080 units in the same area.

If this was the joy every Kenyan low-income earner would experience in the coming days, optimists concluded, it was worth the wait.

The government has shown good resolve, with masons’ hammers in construction sites striking continuously. There are well over 132 projects that are ongoing across the country, all with an aim to plug the housing deficit in Kenya.

Initially mooted as part of former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda in 2017, the Affordable Housing Program (AHP) aimed to deliver 200,000 units annually- ultimately accounting for one million units in five years.

The other three, often less discussed pillars, were affordable healthcare, manufacturing and food security.

It has fallen short by a significant margin. As of April 2025, around 140,000 units had been completed. Projects such as Machakos’ Civil Servants Estate, Nakuru’s Kings Sapphire, and Kajiado’s King Serenity had been fully completed.

Rapid urbanisation, coupled with the burgeoning population (it is estimated that the net population increase since the 2019 census is over eight million) have made it an urgency for the government to prioritise completion of key infrastructure- including roads that open up hinterlands- to afford Kenyans decent housing and mobility.

From the outset, there were challenges. The Third Progress Report on Implementation of The Big Four Agenda in 2020/2021 indicated that only 1,602 out of 80,000, which should have been built, had been completed.

This underperformance was attributed to the suspension of the implementation of the Housing Fund Levy. Since then, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has unfailingly, religiously demanded its cut for the Affordable Housing Programme from pay slips.

Employers are required to deduct 1.5 per cent of the employees’ gross monthly salary towards the affordable housing levy, and top it up with an additional 1.5 per cent (of the same gross salary, an equal amount).

Non-salaried workers should also remit 1.5 per cent of their gross income.

Amid many other deductions, a majority of which have been ramped up in recent years, workers, who feel their pay slips are increasingly getting choked, have consistently fired salvos at the government; this was one of the motivations behind the deadly anti-government protests of mid-2024 and 2025.

"Where are the 54 million Kenyans living? Who has built those houses? GoK (Government of Kenya)? No! All we need from GoK is good planning, regulation, infrastructure and services, to ensure that estates like Pipeline in Nairobi, housing some one million people, built by ordinary Kenyans, are well built," ranted Prof Alfred Omenya, an environmental architect who is also an expert in sustainable urbanism and development, on X a while back.

Some developers in the private sector posit that the government is doing well, just not well enough. They appreciate its complementary effort in the provision of housing as the gap in the market continues to exceed the private sector’s capacity to plug.

“The scale of delivery remains far below the level required to meaningfully close the gap. Annual housing demand is estimated at approximately 250,000 units, yet combined delivery by the government and private sector is, at best, 50,000 units per year. This means that less than a quarter of annual demand is being met, allowing the housing deficit—currently estimated at over two million units—to continue widening,” says Clive Ndege, the Head of Sales at Superior Homes.

For private developers, the AHP is largely complementary. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are encouraged and have the potential to increase supply, but their impact remains limited without stronger incentives, Mr Ndege says.

“To unlock meaningful private-sector participation at scale, the government needs to go further by offering targeted incentives such as tax reliefs, reduced development charges, faster approvals, and, critically, sustained investment in enabling infrastructure. With a stronger enabling framework, the private sector can progressively bridge the housing gap and deliver affordable housing more efficiently and at scale.”

Leonard Kibor, a social activist and communicator, says that the AHP is ‘not enough, but a step in the right direction’, possible if this effort is without graft.

“If we fight corruption and utilise our taxes well, we can do not less than 50,000 units a year. It is not significant, but it is a worthwhile effort, a brave one in a country where deceptive politics seem to take centerstage at every moment.”

Singapore, perennially mentioned as one of the idols for Kenya, has a robust government-sponsored housing programme, with a 99-year leasehold programme accessible to over 80 per cent of the population that can afford it.

The Asian powerhouse experienced rapid economic growth fueled by a crackdown on corruption, ridiculously heavy absorption of emerging technologies, the ramping up of manufacturing, and the creation of affordable housing. Kenya has for long suggested adopting the Singapore blueprint.

While presented as relatively inexpensive, it is looking unlikely that key beneficiaries of the affordable housing in Kenya are the deserving parties. In the longstanding housing shortage in Kenya, alongside speculative pricing of real estate, housing prices have increased by 100 per cent since 2004.

The affordable houses look set to follow this precedent. “The intended beneficiaries of government-built affordable housing are not always the lowest-income earners,” says Mr Ndege.

“In practice, a significant number of units are taken up by middle-income households and, in some cases, higher-income earners who access the houses through proxies. Meanwhile, genuinely low-income households are often excluded due to limited awareness, constrained access to allocation processes, or affordability challenges arising from relatively high deposit requirements and monthly repayments under the programme.”

Since the National Housing Corporation (NHC) was founded in 1953 as a replacement for the colonial government's Central Housing Board, Kenya has grappled with housing shortage and has tinkered with many options, with a focus on housing its hundreds of thousands of civil servants.

Many civil servants long settled in schemes constructed by the government with the provision of subsidised housing to its employees before July 2001.

But these subsidised housing provisions benefited only 12 per cent of the workers, while 88 per cent were left to market private housing, according to The Civil Servants Housing Scheme Fund.

Beyond the provision of ‘adequate and decent housing in well-planned urban areas while ensuring that smaller towns and rural areas have access to decent housing and related basic infrastructure’, according to the government, the AHP was supposed to create employment across the country, spur development in far-flung towns, and increase the real-estate industry’s contribution to the economy.

In the construction of 800,000 affordable houses and 200,000 social homes in five years, the government would create 225,000 direct jobs and 125, 000 indirect and induced jobs.

It would increase the real estate and construction sector’s contribution to GDP from the usual average of around 10 per cent.

The government said the programme was employing ring-fencing strategies to ensure that the jua kali sector would be able to supply inputs and for light industries to provide construction materials such as cement, harnessing the potential of a sprawling informal sector.

As the government announces completions and aspirations on the projects that had stalled, Kenyans on social media continue to express different opinions on this rather ambitious endeavour.

For many, the completion of units and subsequent handover indicate a dedication by the government towards keeping its word, but for others, the pace of completion is still very slow, and in the face of a plethora of national challenges, the presentation of a few units, amid great pomp, is a distraction.

Communications and Public Relations Strategist Lawrence Kitema says that the AHP propels Kenya towards the dream of housing its citizenry in decent, habitable settlements in the not-so-distant future. It starts somewhere, and this is a good foundation, he says.

“By expanding access to affordable and quality housing, the programme is improving living standards, fostering vibrant communities, and stimulating local businesses through construction and related services,” he wrote on X.

"With every home built, the vision of a more inclusive, prosperous Kenya becomes clearer. Affordable Housing is more than housing — it is building the foundation for economic growth, social cohesion, and nationwide development."

But advocate and politician Dr Ekuru Aukot, who is often critical of the government, does not agree. On X, he wrote: “Merry Xmas Kenyans...if you still believe in the scam called 'affordable housing" for the less fortunate, think twice. Iko shida.”