The changing nature of financing low‐income urban housing development in Kenya

The poor state of housing in the cities of developing countries has been the subject of numerous studies. Only a few published articles on the topic, however, emphasise the complexity and interrelatedness of the key components of housing such as land, finance, building materials, and construction technologies. This article examines one of these components, namely finance, and assesses its importance to the development of appropriate low‐income housing in Kenya's second city, Mombasa. Kenya's urban housing policy emphasises home ownership rather than rentals. For the low‐income groups, the twin package of site and service and settlement upgrading has been the main programme of action. One of the most recent projects of this nature, the Second Urban Project (SUP) is evaluated here in so far as the nature of its financing has had important repercussions on the low‐income urban housing sub‐sector in Mombasa. It is the contention of this paper that the introduction into Mombasa's low‐income settlements of the conventional or formal systems of financing residential development has resulted in socio‐economic turbulence of gigantic proportions. It has led to clandestine plot sales, absentee landlordism, escalating rents, and the ‘invasion’ of low‐income settlements by higher income groups. Prior to the implementation of this World Bank funded project, the financing of low‐income housing had been primarily done on an informal basis under a traditional method known as the ‘tenancy‐at‐will’ system which encouraged progressive housing development, and discouraged absentee landlordism. This article concludes that it is not cost‐effective to rapidly replace non‐conventional methods. It would be more appropriate to integrate the two in a pragmatic way by adopting more novel ways of financing low‐income residential development in a way that would minimise the current rampant failures of these projects in meeting their stated objectives.