TITLE: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INFORMAL RENTAL HOUSING FOR LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS IN DAR ES SALAAM AND NAIROBI – PAST POLICY RESPONSES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UPGRADING OF UNPLANNED SETTLEMENTS AUTHOR: RASMUS PRECHT
UN-HABITAT, P.O. Box 67553, 00200 City Square, Nairobi, Kenya, rasmus.precht@unhabitat.org
Abstract of paper to be presented at GDRI Regional Forum “Comparisons between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam”, 14-15 September 2006, Nairobi The majority of urban poor households in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi rent their housing because they cannot afford home ownership or because they have more pressing priorities. In spite of this reality, national housing policies and housing programmes funded by international cooperation agencies in both countries have almost exclusively focused on owner-occupied housing. In both cities, private structure owners in informal settlements are the only producers of affordable shelter in the form of rental housing. Depending on politico-economic conditions determined at the national, city and settlement levels, the provision of rental housing in unplanned settlements can take different forms ranging from cooperative to exploitative “landlordism”. In most unplanned settlements in Dar es Salaam, structure owners are as poor as their tenants whom they accommodate on their plots. In a number of Nairobi slums, structure owners are wealthy “absentee landlords” who extract maximum profit from their rental investments. In both cities, most of the rental housing stock in informal settlements is in poor physical condition and lacks basic urban services, which makes life for renters difficult. Besides, the existing supply of rental housing does not meet the ever growing demand resulting from continued rural-urban migration and natural urban population growth. This paper deals with the following questions: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) What are the characteristics of rental housing in unplanned settlements in both cities? How do rental housing markets function? What has been the impact of past and current public policies on rental housing in unplanned settlements, particularly of settlement upgrading operations? What are the specific problems/needs of structure owners and tenants? Which measures could create the necessary conditions for structure owners to improve and expand their rental housing stock without leading to large-scale gentrification?
This paper is partly based on findings from research carried out in Dar es Salaam in 2005 as part of a PhD dissertation project funded by IFRA. The author conducted interviews with structure owners and tenants in two informal settlements of Dar es Salaam. The Nairobi findings are based on the analysis of existing documentation and interviews with planners and managers of settlement upgrading projects implemented by different organisations.