Assessing the Influence of Stakeholders’ Participation in Public Housing Delivery in Kenya: a Case of the Nairobi City County.

Abstract

Housing plays a critical role in socio-economic development. As such, it is accorded primacy in a nation’s policy and legal framework. In Kenya, various policy and legislative measures have been formulated in order to address this policy problem. Lamentably, despite the retinue of legislative and policies enacted, Kenya is still bedeviled with a deteriorating housing conditions and an ever ballooning shortfall in housing units, a situation further compounded by the explosion of slums and informal settlements in urban areas. Housing policies targeting measures to provide public and/or affordable housing to low income groups have failed as they neither satisfy the real beneficiaries nor achieve their initial objectives. In lieu of the foregoing, this study seeks to assess the influence of stakeholders’ participation, information sharing, legal environment and social accountability in public housing delivery in Nairobi City County. First, the study examines the influence of information sharing on public housing delivery. Secondly, the study explores the role of social accountability in public housing delivery. Thirdly, the study examines how the legal framework on public participation influences public housing delivery. Employing the systems theory and a case study approach, the study finds that meaningful stakeholder participation has been rarely undertaken leading to the failure to understand the financing and other challenges bedeviling housing policies, amplification of costs that policy designers fail to account for and a lack of clarity on issues to do with housing as well as limited information to the common citizen. Additionally, the study found that there’s a mismatch in the budgetary support as well as between the housing policy and legal framework designs and what is realized. The study recommends for the need to enhance meaningful stakeholder participation through awareness creation by the adoption of an open governance policy especially through proactive disclosure of information on housing as well as citizen participation in the push for sustainability of housing initiatives.