| dc.description.abstract | Countries a" over the world have housing problems in one form or the other.
However, the magnitude, the dimension, the scope, the fundamental causes vary
from country to country. Kenya, Iike other countries, has come to realise that
housing is an issue that is too complex in nature and that is too central to national
development to be left solely to private initiatives. As such the government is very
much involved in providing solutions to the problem of housing.
In this study the author hos outlined the government housing
pol icy and programmes in general, and the role of the National Housing Corporation
in particular from the time of its inception, that is, 1967, up to the present time.
The study reveals that the government so for has undertaken a series of constructive,
progressive and far-reaching actions to combat the housing problem. However,
the approach to the problem has a number of glows. A housing policy that is not
spelled out in specific plans and programmes by and large, tends to become just
empty phrases of good intentions. Many plans falter because the policy is too ambitious,
and also because the strategy devised to carry out the plan is wrong so that the money
available is exhausted on the more expensive dwellings before any low-cost housing
is built. One therefore finds that the housing policy tends to favour the middle and
high income groups; the National Housing Corporation, therefore is involved in
building symbolic housing schemes which are claimed to be low-cost housing projects
but are usually quite outside the means of the very poor.
A good deal of what is wrong with these low cost housing schemes lies in faulty
conceptualization of realistic housing standards. In a few words, most low cost houses
are too expensive for the people for whom, at least in theory, they are designed. To
a large measure , this phenomenon was created during the colonial era when planning
standards were introduced which did not recognize local conditions and encouraged
segregation among income groups and races | en |
