Slums, the enemy within: Part 1, Why it’s hard to begin with
By: David A. Smith
A while ago [Early September – Ed.], Kenya’s newspaper The East African Standard published a great and extensive series on the proposed upgrading of Kibera: Africa’s largest slum, which I visited in 2005.
The mud structures (in the foreground) will be replaced by the new housing units (in the background) in Kibera under the Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (Kensup). [PHOTO: BONIFACE OKENDO/STANDARD]
The articles covered community resistance in the Standard, Kenya, the indignity of having no toilets, slumlord exploitation, slumdweller fears, an idealist’s critique, the power of savings, the potential to reform building codes, and an editorial endorsing affordable housing (which the Standard mistakenly but understandably calls ‘rent control’).
Kibera in 2005:
All Kibera 2005 photos taken during my visit
Woven throughout the series were the main themes that show why slums, though hard to eradicate, are also hard to upgrade.
The journey to the realisation of low-cost houses in Kibera, and the envisaged eradication of slums, has been long and bumpy. And it appears far from over.
Slums have enemies within: people who for reasons noble or ignoble will fiercely oppose any major upgrading program. And every slum upgrading program faces one huge obstacle: the cost. Affordable housing always costs money, costs that are non-recoverable over any normal private-investment horizon, and that money must come from government:
The Government estimates a staggering Sh880 billion will be needed to eradicate slums and informal settlements.
To give you a sense of scale, that’s $16 billion – and if that doesn’t seem large enough, figure it as 26% of Kenya’s $62 billion GDP; for America to spend the equivalent amount of our $14.4 trillion GDP would mean an expenditure of $3,700 billion – yes, $3.7 trillion dollars.
However, Housing Minister Soita Shitanda has been quoted as saying the Government does not have the money.
Minister Shitanda and his official vehicle
And that presumes slums will sit still while being eradicated, and that the development of new higher-quality housing will not attract thousands if not millions of new rural-to-urban immigrants.
Kibera in 2005: limited only by land area
It is, in short, a pipe dream.
When the Kibera-Soweto slum upgrading pilot project was launched on World Habitat Day in 2004, it seemed like far away dream.
But we must start somewhere.
About 1,500 families from the largest slum in
A drop in the ocean? Or a pilot that shows feasibility and builds political and economic support?
The construction of 17 blocks of five-storey high flats totaling 600 three-room units is complete and residents of Kibera’s Soweto-East village would be the first to move.
Something has been done.
Once they are moved, the shanties they live in will be demolished and new modern houses built.
Perhaps those shanties will be demolished to make way for better housing on their sites. Slums die by withering; the bulldozer succeeds only when the people no longer need them, because they have moved into better accommodations.
Kibera in 2005: Our Dream House
Once the tenants are moved to the site, the Government will pull down their current structures and build permanent houses within two and half years.
“The people at the site will return to new houses but pay for them by installments. Most have already formed cooperative societies and their savings are impressive” –
This is my design! They’re doing it!
Kibera in 2005: savings cooperative members and lists
The initiative to eradicate slums was mooted in 2000 as the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (Kensup) through an agreement between the Government and UN-Habitat.
After a detailed situation analysis in 2001, a pilot project began at
Progress was slow, and intangible:
The agreement was renewed in January 2003 and the slum upgrading initiative kicked off in earnest. The Kibera-Soweto pilot project was launched on World Habitat Day in 2004, with a graphic media presentation of the planned redevelopment of the slum into orderly flats.
We love the graphics. The real work is much harder.
Kibera in 2005: plaque commemorating building on communal toilets
The Housing ministry says Kensup is a core programme aimed at addressing housing problems affecting the majority of the urban population who live in slums and informal settlements. Statistics show 60% of
Four years ago, after the Bellagio housing conference, I visited Nairobi at the Kenya government’s invitation, to take further into implementation design the Kibera slum upgrading financing strategy several of us – including Angelo Mozilo, then-CEO of Countrywide, Stewart Paperin of the Open Society Institute, Nic Retsinas of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and various Kenyan government representatives – had brainstormed and recommended.
Building on work that Kensup and UN Habitat’s Slum Upgrading Facility SUF) had begun, I spent an intensive week, hard numerous interviews, took copious notes, then returned to
Kibera in 2005: vegetable stand
In August, 2005, I delivered the report, including an extensive financial model, and heard nothing further. (It is often thus in
Now comes the first slum-upgrading development, incorporating principles in that original design. Even if little of this was our doing, we pushed the boulder in the right direction.
– says Walter Hongo, a member of the Soweto East Settlement Executive Committee (SEC).
As the article explains elsewhere:
SEC’s are mainly comprised of slum dwellers. Their main role is to act as a link between the programme implementation unit and settlement community.
Buy-in from slumdwellers is critical; without it, nothing can succeed.
Kibera in 2005: checkers with bottle caps
The SEC is expected to facilitate community networks, co-operatives, and resource mobilisation processes such as savings and credit schemes among others. It is the forum for advocacy for community rights and ideally ensures participation in decision-making.
All this comes from Slumdwellers’ International’s best practice.
He says beneficiaries will allocated between one and three rooms in the site. Each room will cost Sh1,000 [Monthly rent – Ed.] according to the initial plan.
Of course, this being Kenya, where there is never a last battlefield, there is dithering:
Hongo says the movement of tenants has been put off since President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have been, due to official engagements, unable to attend the first event.
We’re taking so much time on grip-n-grins
The Lang’ata decanting site was identified as a suitable holding ground.
The site is located at across the slum settlement adjacent to the village. It measures two hectares. Construction of 17 blocks of five storey high flats totalling 600 three room self-combined units has now been completed, months after the initial November 2007 deadline. In addition, a 4.26km spine road and associated infrastructure are under construction parallel to the railway line across Kibera. The proposed physical infrastructure on the spine road includes roads and walkways, storm water drainage among others.
If it happens – when it happens? – the change will seem as paradise to Kiberans:
Zipporah Onyango, Kibera resident.”All I need is change. I have always dreamt of the day I will stop paying to use a toilet and relieving myself in a bucket.”
After decades living in squalor, most families in the sprawling Kibera slums cannot wait to move to ‘paradise’.
To them, the slum upgrading project is godsend. They see it as an opportunity for a new lease of life from the flying toilets, leaking roofs, stinking and clogged trenches, and all other forms of unhygienic conditions that characterise life in Kibera.
‘Flying toilets’ are the colloquialism for defecating in public, usually into a plastic bag, and then throwing the feces … somewhere.
Mrs Zipporah Onyango who has lived in Kibera’s Soweto-East village for the past two decades says she cannot wait to board the truck that will take her closer to her dream house.
“This will be a miracle as I never imagined getting out of this place. It has been so frustrating that even my relatives have refused to visit me here because they say place is inaccessible and insecure,” says the 39-year-old mother of four.
You are what you live in. Change your housing and you change your life, and your children’s lives
Her neighbour, Elemina Indeche, says the new houses will be an equivalent of paradise and will make a difference in her life.
“All I need is change. I have always dreamt of the day I will stop paying to use a toilet and relieving myself in a bucket,” says the 49-year-old mother of two.
Kibera in 2005: toilet built by the co-op
Everyone should have the human right to squat in private, safely and cleanly.
And after a 14-year sting in the heart of Kibera, Joseph Onyango, 34, says he has never believed in miracles, but says one is about to happen.
“Imagine the agony of being rained on while in your house or the shame and indignity of having to use a flying toilet. That is what my life has been like for 14 years now. And when I dared report it to the landlord, he would scream at me, saying I should move to a house with toilets.”
Hideous.
“It was all mockery, but it is now just to happen,” he says.
Once the initial money had been found, why did it take so long? Because of the enemies within.
Kibera in 2005: Sign outside the Ministry of Lands and Housing
Starting tomorrow, we’ll meet them.
[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]
Write a comment