| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to establish the factors influencing provision of quality housing in
Mandera town, Kenya. The study was guided by four objectives focusing on the factors that
determine whether the cost building materials influences provision of quality housing in
Mandera, to determine whether availability of land influences provision of housing quality
housing in Mandera, to establish whether size of population influences provision of quality
housing in Mandera and to find out how government policies influence provision of quality
housing in Mandera. The literature reviews focused on the concept of the State and Social Policy
at the Service of Capital- a Marxist View. The study adopted the descriptive survey as the
research design. The target population included all the households in Mandera town. The sample
size was 364 household heads in Mandera Town. The study showed that the maximum numbers
of people in a household were 10 and a minimum of 1 (one) implying that the social amenities in
the area of residents‟ were strained by a big number of people found in a household.
On whether the residents of Mandera County experience housing problems, the study found that
there are several problems experienced by the residents of Madera town due to poor housing.
Some of the problems experienced include living standards as attested by 95% of the
respondents, health problems shown by 91% of the respondents and work conditions indicated
by 84% of the respondents. When the respondents were probed on health problem they
encounter, they indicated that due to congestion in the houses they contract communicable
diseases.
On whether the cost of building materials influenced the quality of housing, 80% of the
respondents said that the cost of building materials was very high in Madera town compared to
other town. That implied that the cost of building houses was very high making the cost of
building houses very high. This could be due to transport cost considering that Madera town in
very far away from Nairobi or Thika where most of the building materials are sourced from.
The other objective sought to establish the whether population size influence the quality of
housing. The respondents were therefore asked to give their opinion on whether population size
affects quality of housing. As earlier indicated in Table 4.5 there are a maximum number of ten
people who live in a house. This affects the quality of housing in relation to provision of
facilities such as water, electricity and sanitary services. The study also sought to establish the government policies that affect quality housing. The respondents were asked whether they are
aware of government policies while 27% said that they are aware of such policies. Some of the
policies that were given by the respondents include, restricted building were people cannot build
houses in some places hence making people build temporary houses that compromises the
quality of housing. | en_US |
