A section of Mukuru Kwa Reuben residents on Wednesday occupied a local police station seeking to forestall alleged plans to evict them to pave the way for the government to build more units under the Affordable Housing Programme.
On Tuesday, May 20, President William Ruto presided over the official handover of 1,080 housing units to beneficiaries at Mukuru's housing project in Embakasi South.
The project sits on 56 acres, comprising 13,248 housing units, a development that features bedsitters (5,616 units across 26 blocks), one-bedrooms (3,024 units in 14 blocks), and two-bedrooms (4,608 units across 48 blocks).
It emerged that the government planned to evict residents from another section of the slum to put up more houses.
On May 21, a local organisation, Mukuru Community Justice Centre (MCJC), led some residents in occupying Villa Police Station, claiming there are plans to evict residents without any resettlement plans for them.
The organisation said reports that the slum dwellers benefited from the new houses were not true and were only used as a diversionary tactic, and are misleading.
MCJC condemned the said plans to evict people, describing the affordable programme as a tactic to displace community members by people who want to achieve their selfish ends.
“Reports that Mukuru kwa Njenga residents benefited from the affordable housing project are misleading. This is a tactic to evict Mukuru Kwa Njenga community members. We resist any planned forced evictions by the state,” MCJC said in its statement.
Ruto, on May 20, defended the government's Affordable Housing program against criticism that the new high-rise units are just but 'vertical slums'.
He dismissed the notion that his housing projects would not benefit Kenyans who are struggling economically.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a vertical slum. There’s a misguided tendency to equate density with deprivation. A slum is not defined by population size, but by the absence of services, safety, and dignity,” the President said.
He promised Mukuru residents that the homes would come with critical infrastructure to ensure a decent standard of living for low-income Kenyans.
"We also recognise that homes alone are not enough. People must be able to earn, trade, and thrive. That is why we are building modern, structured markets alongside housing, economic hubs where farmers, traders, and Mama Mboga can do business with dignity," Ruto said.
With the government targeting over 13,000 units in the Mukuru area upon completion of the project, Ruto described the handing over of the 1080 social housing units as ' the most consequential day in his political career'.
Ruto further emphasised that the provision of infrastructure alone was not enough to make the project transformational, as he predicted the project would have a ripple effect on the economy of the Mukuru area.
