The government has rolled out a plan to construct a total of 1,500 housing units in Pangani and another 1,600 to be built in Jevanjee.
Six leading local banks, Absa, Equity, KCB, NCBA, Housing Finance, and Stanbic, have also confirmed their commitment to giving Sh335 billion for homeownership mortgages, all this under the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP). The banks will finance potential homeowners registered in the Boma Yangu portal.
The State Department for Housing and Urban Development Principal Secretary Charles Hinga confirmed to The Star that the partnership was a demonstration of the Public-Private Partnership model to promote homeownership in the country.
“This partnership represents significant progress and will help potential homeowners, especially in the low and middle-income segments to overcome the financial hurdles to home ownership,” he said.
In January, the first 228 units out of 1,370 at Park Road in Ngara were handed over to the government and the government has confirmed that the occupancy of this areas will be 40% civil servants and 60% non-civil servants.
The AHP is one of the pillars for the Uhuru Kenyatta administration under the Big Four agenda. It uses private sector for developing the houses who then hand them to the government for distribution. The programme ensures that to use the It is intended to provide decent and affordable housing to low and middle-income households.
Under the AHP, the More than 300,000 Kenyans are registered with the AHP on the Boma Yangu portal. Over 25,000 are active contributors. They have so far contributed Sh253 million.
Registered members who have contributed the minimum 10 per cent value of the houses they are interested in qualify for allocation.
They also benefit directly from the partial credit guarantee to access mortgage finance from the six banks, subject to the respective bank credit approval process.
The mortgage mostly benefits the rich who easily approaches banks for funding . We pray the poor will be looked into this time round