Ownership is Not a Priority Among the
Urban Poor
The Case of Nairobi’s Informal Settlements
by Graham Alder
It is often
asserted, in
Kenya and
elsewhere, that
ownership of
land and housing
is fundamental to
the reduction of
poverty, to
improving living
conditions and to
enhancing
livelihoods.
However, in
Nairobi, Kenya’s
capital city,
ownership is not
a priority among
the poor
themselves.
An aerial view of Nairobi's Mathare Valley slum.
© UNCHS/Rasna Warah
Tenure Types
It has been estimated that 55 per cent of Nairobi’s residents live in informal settlements
which cover only 5.5 per cent of the city’s residential land.1 In other words, half the
population, the poor, is crammed into slums.
Within these settlements, the most common dwelling unit is one room, accommodating
an average of four to six people. The rooms are built in barrack-type blocks of temporary
materials such as timber off-cuts or mud and wattle and have a very high density,
typically 250 units per hectare. Urban services, if they are provided at all, are extremely
basic, consisting of earth roads and paths, earth drains, communal water points and pit
latrines shared by as many as 60 people. Morbidity and mortality are significantly higher
than in other parts of the city. Kenyan slums, and particularly those in Nairobi, are
arguably among the worst in Africa.
The land occupied by informal settlements is either public or private, and the "owners" of
the structures normally have a legal or quasi-legal status which has enabled them to build.
On public land, structure owners have temporary occupation licences obtained from the
local authority, or verbal permission or a letter from the local chief (a state employee).
On private land, the landowner normally gives permission to build and collects rent. The
majority of the informal settlements are therefore not inhabited by "squatters" in the
classic sense that they have invaded the land or occupied it without the owner’s consent.
Renting by the room is the common form of house tenure, accounting for about 80 per
cent of residents. Security of tenure is precarious; evictions, often violent, occur at the
whim of the structure owner. The local press frequently carries photographs of evicted
families sitting helplessly on their few possessions. Current legislation on the rights of
tenants does not apply to informal settlements and to quote Isaac Karanja Mwangi2
"...there is a great deal of abuse of tenancy rights, especially in informal tenancies, which
urgently need addressing through policy and law reform".
Political Patronage
The Provincial Commissioner, who is responsible to the Office of the President, is at the
apex of the District administrative hierarchy which reaches down to the smallest
communities through District Officers, Chiefs, Assistant Chiefs and Elders. In informal
settlements, it is known that some chiefs and elders3 derive a considerable income from
allocating public land by granting permission to construct and improve temporary
buildings on public land. Indeed this is one of the major sources of income for many
officials and it is alleged that this income trickles up to higher levels. At a grander scale,
large areas of land within informal settlements and elsewhere are allocated to individuals
as part of the system of political patronage. One effect of this is that it reduces the amount
of land which could be used for housing the poor.
Other Priorities
Given the problems faced by the urban poor living in slums there are many who advocate
that the provision of tenure through ownership is fundamental to poverty reduction. It is
argued that ownership will:






remove the possibility of arbitrary eviction;
provide households with an asset which can be used as security for credit;
provide a foothold in the housing market through a tradeable asset;
provide space for home-based economic activities;
foster better living conditions, a better environment (especially space, sanitation
and water) and improve personal security — particularly freedom from violent
crime; and
provide the conditions for the development of communities as residents have a
sense of ownership.
However, data emerging from a current UNCHS (Habitat) supported survey in Nairobi,
and confirmed by other surveys4, indicates that the poor in Nairobi do not give high
priority to security of tenure in general. They give even less priority to the possibility of
owning land or a house in the city. Higher priority is given to personal security in cases
such as when women street vendors are robbed of their takings at gunpoint at the end of
the day. The urban poor are more concerned about problems which impact directly
on their ability to earn a living, including access to health and education services. In
fact, the ability to earn an income or keep a job are often more important considerations
among residents of informal settlements in Nairobi than security of tenure. That is why,
when given the option to rent or own a dwelling, residents opt to rent (See Box 1). In
cases where they are given the chance to own a dwelling, most choose to sell it as soon as
they obtain the title deed.
Box 1. Tenure, Yes, But for Whom?
Examples of two projects which have attempted to tackle the tenure issue illustrate the
complexities of the situation.
The Mathare IVA project was established by the Catholic Diocese of Nairobi with
finance from the German Development Bank (KFW) in the early 1990s. The project is
located in the Mathare Valley settlement in an area characterised by barrack blocks of
buildings let on a room-by-room basis. The objective of the project was to provide rental
accommodation at reasonable rates in new dwellings. Existing buildings were to be
demolished, structure owners compensated for the value of the structure only (not the
land) and new building constructed and let by the Catholic Church. The land was
allocated by the Commissioner of Lands with the strong support of the ministry
responsible for housing and the Nairobi City Council. The project went through many
conceptual changes as the implementers began to grasp the social and political
complexities of Mathare. For example, it was initially assumed that structure owners
were absentee landlords, not poorer resident landlords who depend on rental income to
survive. The discord between interest groups, exacerbated by ethnicity and by politicians,
led to violent conflicts, with, paradoxically, the Catholic Church being seen as the cause
of the evictions. This is not to attribute responsibility but simply to point out the
complexities of intervening in informal settlements in the city.
In another case the Umoja II project, funded by USAID through the Government of
Kenya and the Nairobi City Council, attempted to provide individual tenure in a new
building project which was implemented in the mid-1980s. The issue to be addressed was
that the poor could not afford dwellings built to standards set in building bylaws. The
solution was to build six room units and sell each room on a condominium basis. The
owner, therefore, bought, through a loan, a room and a separate toilet/shower located in
the courtyard. Therefore the new owners bought a very small amount of space but did
have access to a reasonable standard of basic services. The concept was that the owneroccupiers would have a foothold in the housing market and over time would graduate to
ownership of a better house. In fact, within a short space of time, the majority of the
owners had sold their units, despite measures to prevent this in the loan agreement. The
new owners are now renting the rooms on the open market.
While tenure through ownership may be desirable for some, the majority will continue to
rent and for many this is a preference. This is partly related to attitudes to living in the
city: most Nairobians don’t consider the city to be their true home; home is the ancestral
land or village. Therefore, many prefer to invest in their "home area" in parts of rural
Kenya.5 Moreover, if ownership were offered, the majority could not afford to service a
loan for even the cheapest dwelling.
At the same time, in some settlements there is an increasing awareness that residents can
be assertive about their rights as is evidenced by the emergence of tenants associations in
Nairobi such as Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Federation of Village Dwellers). This, coupled
with the moratorium on demolitions in residential areas put in place by the Provincial
Commissioner in 1997, has reduced incidences of evictions.
A Package of Measures
It is clear that ownership as a means to gaining
security of tenure is only one aspect of tackling the
problem of informal settlements in Nairobi. The first
challenge is to develop a legal and normative
framework for the rental market in which the rights
of tenants and landlords are respected. This is
important not only to protect tenants but also to
encourage investment in existing and new areas of
settlement.
Taking a longer perspective, tenure is an issue which
must form part of a cohesive range of measures to
ensure that Nairobi can provide reasonable shelter
conditions to the majority of its residents. The
Development Strategy for Nairobi’s Informal
Settlements, formulated by a wide range of city
stakeholders, includes the following regarding
tenure:
(a) recognition of existing informal settlements;
(b) security of tenure for residents ofrecognized
settlements, including:








A "laundry" in a Nairobi slum: It
is
estimated that between 40 to 70
a system which ensures that residents directly
per cent of residents of cities in
benefit from a mix of ownership and rental
the developing world operate
options;
outside of the law.
a system which prevents residents from being
©
UNCHS/Rasna
Warah
"bought out";
a system which is selected with participation
of residents; and
a system which encourages business investment;
streamlining and improving the transparency of land delivery systems;
introducing a participatory approach to physical planning and upgrading;
making suitable land available for low-income housing development;
introducing appropriate development standards;

mobilising local resources for housing development.
Provision of various forms of tenure in both existing settlements and new areas should be
part of this integrated strategy, including freehold, leasehold and forms of joint tenure
such as cooperatives, which offer economies of scale and opportunities for community
development.
The key element to improving conditions and opportunities for low-income residents of
Nairobi is political will and that is closely connected to existing vested interests at the
settlement, city and national levels. Effective policy changes can come about in various
ways; pressure from communities and their representative organizations, pressure from
NGOs and other civil society organizations, even the development of enlightened selfinterest by those with a vested interest in the existing system.
Graham Alder is Principal Consultant at Matrix Development Consultants in Nairobi,
Kenya.
References
1 Matrix Development Consultants/USAID 1994.
2 Isaac Karanja Mwangi. The Nature of Rental Housing in Kenya, Environment and
Urbanization, Vol.9, No.2, 1997.
3 Examples are given by Jane Weru in her address reproduced in the report of the First
Public Forum on Corruption organized by the Social Development Network, 1997.
4 For example reports of Strategy Information Events held by the Nairobi Informal
Settlements Coordination Committee during 1999.
5 See also: Warah, Rasna, Divided Loyalties: The African Identity Crisis, Habitat
Debate, Vol.5 No.1, 1999.