Jevanjee, Bachelor residents to be relocated as Sonko’s second housing project kicks off

Nairobi Lands  Housing and Urban Planning CEC flanked by County Attorney Lydia Kwamboka and Lands Chief Officer SG Mwangi, while chairing a meeting with Jeevanjee and Bachelors estates residents at City Hall on November 15, 2019|PHOTO| GPS

NAIROBI, November 15, 2019, GPS

The Nairobi county government has kicked off plans to relocate Jevanjee and Bachelors tenants to pave way for the Nairobi Urban Renewal Affordable Housing project.

The county on Thursday held a meeting with residents from the two estates where they agreed that the process has to kick off.

The 80 tenants will be served a 30-day notice and will be given Sh600,000 each as facilitation fee to get alternative houses as they await completion of the houses.

Finance executive Pauline Kahiga said the county has already prepared cheques for disbursement and that tenants willing to pick them can do so at the county finance offices.

She said the county is also finalizing the paper work that will guarantee the tenants priority to ownership of the new houses.

“We will proceed with the due process of issuing notice to the tenants and we expect that the engineers will be on the ground as soon as they vacate,” Kiragu said.

Kahiga noted that the county is not compensating but facilitating the tenants to get alternating housing.

County Attorney Lydia Kwamboka assured the residents, in the presence of their lawyer, that the county has properly handled all the grievances they had raised through their lawyer.

She revealed that some tenants have been directly engaging the county expressing readiness to relocate upon being given facilitation fee to get temporary houses.

The tenants’ lawyer had raised issues revolving around an undertaking by the previous regime in terms of compensation but that was dismissed by Kwamboka and Kahiga who said that the county will only commit itself to the renegotiated agreement by the current regime.

“We know what we offered the tenants and some of them are ready to go ahead and relocate without going through the lawyer,” they said.

The county officials admitted that the idea commenced in 2016 but noted that in the negotiated agreement together with the developers, the whole process is not a continuation of what was agreed in 2016.

Urban Planning Chief Officer S. G. Mwangi said the 30-day notice will remain effective and that the facilitation fee was agreed by the tenants.

The tenants will be provided with a lease agreement or tenant purchase agreement which will be issued together with the notice to vacate.

Once the houses are complete, the current tenants will be given priority and will occupy the houses as owners.

The developer said he is ready to hit the ground running once the tenants vacate and that he will take a maximum of four months.

The two estates will accommodate around 3,000 housing units to add to the 1,434 housing units to be built in Pangani.

Each tenant will be given a new house costing Sh3 million that is payable in 30 years at a negotiated monthly rent of Sh8,000.

Another meeting will be held on November 26 between the county and the tenants and the county will by then have issued them all the requited documents.

John Mugambi and Alice Wanjiku, a mother of three who was among those issued with cheques of Sh600,000, welcomed the initiative.

Wanjiku lauded Governor Mike Sonko ‘for the noble idea’.

She regretted that the initiative did not start earlier.

“I have stayed there for quite a long time and I pray that this will be one of my testimonies for the future generation,’ she said.