Squatters or tenants: the commercialization of unauthorized housing in Nairobi

World Development, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 87-96,1984. Printed in Great Britain.

0305-750X/84 $3.00 + 0.00 o 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd.

Squatters or Tenants: The Commercialization of Unauthorized Housing in Nairobi PHILIP AMIS” University

of Kent

at Canterbury

and University

of Nairobi

- The conventional view of squatting suggests that the squatter builds his own house. In this paper we shall present fieldwork data from Nairobi which is totally at variance with this view. We shall present data on a private rental sector, albeit illegal, that is operating in such ‘squatting’ areas. In particular we shall investigate its growth, profitability and ownership,

Summary.

together with the characteristics of the landlords and tenants involved. the provision of low-income shelter is now a commercial activity.

1. INTRODUCTION The argument of this paper is that squatting as it is conventionally defined no longer exists in Nairobi. Instead we shall suggest that the provision of such low-income shelter is now a commercial activity. This transformation has mainly occurred as a result of this sector’s extremely high profitability which has attracted capital, despite its uncertain legal status. Hence we shall characterize Nairobi’s shanty towns as involving the operation of the private rental sector, albeit illegal. Within such settlements we can find a well-developed system of informal ownership and landlord-tenant relations. We shall first investigate the concept of squatting, then give a brief overview of Nairobi’s history before illustrating the nature of this unauthorized housing market from a particular case study.

2. THE CONCEPT

OF SQUATTING

The conventional view of squatting in Third World cities involves the illegal occupation of land and self-construction of shelter. The settlements so formed are often seen as being politically autonomous, under a permanent threat of demolition and outside the legal system. Characteristically the urban poor were building their own homes on land they did not own with anything they could lay their hands on. This was occurring partly because private capital did not find such a sector attractive for investment (Roberts; 1978, pp. 147-148).

We shall suggest

that

It was the squatter’s ability to solve his own housing problem together with these settlements’ community control that so excited the earlier researchers (Turner, 1976). Indeed it was from this work that a new orthodoxy was developed emphasizing the positive aspects of squatting and self-help. Attempts to harness the self-evident ability of the squatter to house himself have now become the cornerstones of the international agencies’ approaches to Third World housing. In particular they form an integral part of site and service and squatter upgrading schemes. At this stage it is useful to disentangle the two aspects generally characterizing squatting, namely illegal occupation and self-construction. It is important to understand that there is no necessary connection between these two aspects. Unfortunately these two aspects have become confused and therefore the illegal occupation of land has often wrongly been used to infer self-construction of housing. There are many cases where squatting does not involve both these aspects. The process of self-construction applies when the provision or production of shelter and its consumption are contained within the same household unit. I would argue that this process is better understood as ‘subsistence shelter’ because, to draw an analogy with agri* This paper is based on the research for a Ph.D. thesis entitled ‘A Shanty Town of Tenants’. I would like to thank my supervisor, Chris Pickvance, for his help, the Housing and Research Development Unit in Nairobi, Jeremy Jakoya for his help with fieldwork and the SSRC for funding. 87

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WORLDDEVELOPMENT

culture, it is a non-commercial activity. Thus the builder, the owner and the occupier are contained within the same social unit so that there is no monetary exchange or tenancy. Here the illegal occupation of land allows for the provision of shelter without monetary exchange. The crucial point is that the subsistence shelter aspect of squatting can only exist in theabsence of capital, since the involvement of capital will result in the establishment of commercial relations. Furthermore, capital’s ability to penetrate and integrate new sectors and markets into a capitalist and commercial economy has been well documented. The term ‘commercialization’ is normally used to refer to the specific process by which subsistence agriculture is transformed into a cash crop economy. This involves basically opening up the essentially closed nature of subsistence agriculture where production is for local consumption to a situation where crops are grown for the market and cash. Within the housing context we can identify a parallel process that results in the construction of housing explicitly for profit, in this case for subsequent rental.’ Thus unlike ‘subsistence shelter’ where the motivation is a room over one’s head, with commercialization it becomes profit. Now, the keypoint about illegalityas anaspect of squatting is that it generally discouraged capital investment in this sector. What we would argue is that what influences whether subsistence shelter exists is the security for potential capital investment rather than illegality per se. However, legality is only one among many factors (i.e. demand, availability of capital) influencing whether capital will penetrate this sector. Thus it is through such mechanisms that the two aspects of squatting are related; there is no necessary connection. Indeed the notion that illegality and self-construction are essential elements of squatting refers to a special case that has been popularized by much work in Latin America. Our aim will be to show that illegality and the intervention of capital are not always incompatible and that it is perfectly feasible for the private sector to operate in such illegal areas thus pre-empting the existence of subsistence shelter. We shall show that within Nairobi it is through political mechanisms that security for investment and ‘ownership’ can be obtained despite the absence of formal legality. (This will be discussed in Section 5.) It is this intervention of capital in unauthorized’ settlements and the related process of commercialization of sub-

sistence shelter that we are interested in: or, in a nutshell, shanty town real estate. Recently within Latin America a commercialization process has been noted in the form of illegal sub-divisions which are then sold off for owner-occupation (Gilbert, 198 1). Within unauthorized settlements the emergence of a small-scale rental sector has also been observed (Edwards, 1981). Thus in Latin America the intervention of market mechanisms in lowincome accommodation results in owneroccupation and small-scale landlordism. In contrast, in Kenya this commercialization process has resulted in the creation of a largescale unauthorized rental sector. Here the individual squatter has become the tenant of predominantly large-scale landlords in unauthorized settlements. An important and simultaneous aspect of these processes is the tendency towards increased political acceptance of such settlements and consequently an element of legitimation. In the colonial period and in the 1960s the squatters viewed the government from across the ‘barricades’ as it were. By 1980 the government was providing water. Thus we may characterize its position as one of administrative control rather than open conflict. Within Nairobi we can see how this political acceptance was a prerequisite of largescale capital’s intervention and the subsequent commercialization of housing operations in this sector. Throughout the period of our study, 1960-80, there is a tension between a smallscale local rental sector which represents the capitalization and renting out of additional rooms by original squatters, and the intervention of larger-scale capital owned by noninhabitants which is increasingly dominating the situation. The issue here is who is able to make money from the very lucrative openings in unauthorized housing. While it seems that pressure towards the commercialization of unauthorized settlements may be universal throughout the periphery the specific form it takes is a function of the prevailing political economy.

3. NAIROBI Nairobi is a settler city which owes its existence to its position on the Uganda railway and its function as a service centre to the white settler economy of Kenya. It was originally conceived as a European city where Africans were ‘tolerated’ only for their labour power. To achieve this with the minimum of public

SQUATTERS

89

OR TENANTS

expenditure and a disease-free urban environment Nairobi was systematically racially zoned in the major plans of 1905, 1927 and 1948 (Van Zwanenburg, 1972). The result of this was an extremely unequal land distribution which means that for the impoverished African majority the availability of urban land has been and still is severely restricted. Indeed it was not until 1954 that Africans were allowed to own leasehold property in Nairobi. Thus until recently the Kenyan Government has attempted to control rural-urban migration and by implication urbanization. A related colonial legacy is that of housing and planning standards that cannot possibly be implemented given the economic conditions facing the majority. There seems to be a loose connection between the form of ‘squatting’, indeed its existence, and the extent of state attempts to control ‘urbanization’. At one extreme is the apartheid system, with its panoply of legal regulations, i.e. pass laws attempting to restrict the numbers who may be resident in urban areas. While Kenya and Zimbabwe have abandoned the use of pass laws, there are similarities due to their previous use; in such cases the result is often invasions and squatting directly in confrontation with the State. On the other hand Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and much of West Africa and the Middle East have never attempted to stop urbanism, and in these countries, low-income rental accommodation is common. In many ways this paper indirectly addresses itself to the way the former group are coming to look like the latter. Or put another way, the growth of commercialization may be a direct result of the easing of controls on urbanization, thus giving unauthorized settlements some legitimacy. In 1962 Nairobi’s population was 343,500. By 1979 it had risen to 827,800. This represents an annual urban growth rate of approximately 5%. Thus throughout our study period (196080) Nairobi has been a city undergoing rapid urbanization. As a result of this growth we may characterize Nairobi’s recent housing market as in a permanent condition of an excess of demand over supply. As a result of the rapid growth of Nairobi, the inappropriateness of the planning laws, and the failure of the public housing policy to make any serious impact, the majority have increasingly sought shelter in the unauthorized sector. The growth of this sector has been spectacular: thus in 1962 there were 500 units growing to 22,000 in 1972 (Chana and Morrison, 1973, p. 216). By 1979 a rough estimate would give 110,000 unauthorized housing units, i.e. housing roughly 40% of Nairobi’s population. However, this

sector has also become increasingly commercialized. While the data is not available we can suggest that in 1962 almost all these units were non-commercial, i.e. subsistence shelter and that by 1970 almost all the additional units were commercial, i.e. rental. Hence the subsistence shelter that still remains in Nairobi is essentially a historical residual from the 1960s. Indeed in one settlement we can actually see how the old subsistence shelter type structures are being taken down and replaced in situ by rental units. The scale and speed of this unauthorized commercial housing development is a result of its exceptional profitability, which in itself was conditional upon the restricted land market, the inappropriateness of the housing standards and the high level of demand. In the next section we shall examine the mechanisms by which this growth has happened.

4. KIBERA We investigated one such unauthorized settlement in West Nairobi called Kibera. Historically the site has been associated with the Nubian community in Kenya. The colonial administration allowed the Nubians to settle in the area since they were an important element in the colonial military. In a legal sense the land in Kibera is all government-owned. However, the colonial authorities allowed these Nubians to settle as ‘tenants at will’. In the area’s subsequent history we can see how claims to settle in the area shift from being based upon ethnicity, i.e. Nubians only, to being based upon more strictly economic criteria, i.e. ability to pay. This process mirrors the general capitalistic transformation within Kenya from ‘traditional’ communal rights to land to private individual title deeds. Throughout Kibera’s history the urban settlement and development has had no formal legal basis. However property relations and ‘ownership’ do exist in a de facto sense. During the mid-1950s the Nubians were able to profit from their privileged position within the colonial administration by beginning to construct additional rooms explicitly for rental purposes. The financial returns were exceptional and have been estimated at an annual capital return of 17 1% (Temple, 1973) (see note 3). The administration tacitly accepted this development perhaps in return for their loyalty to the colonial state. It would seem that the Nubians were in a particularly advantageous position during the State of Emergency or Mau-Mau from 1952 to 1960 as they could be trusted by

90

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

the State. Also, the official policy of removing the Kikuyu from Nairobi would have left them almost uniquely able to exploit the potential housing openings created by the encouraged migration from Western Kenya. By 1972 the settlement had grown to around 17,000 inhabitants composed of a private rental sector of a limited scale and some subsistence shelter on the fringes of the site. At this stage the local administration seems to have been passive as regards unauthorized urban development, However, at some stage during 1974 the local administration gained effective control over land allocation and was thus able to informally intervene in the unauthorized housing market. Previous to this, as we have already stated, the administration took a passive attitude to what was basically a ‘free for all’, and there was no effective control over the construction of subsistence shelter and rental accommodation. However in 1974 the administration took a more active stance, and started to allocate permission to build in Kibera. In order to support this new allocation process it threatened to demolish any new housing built without permission. The local administration was thus able to intervene in this unauthorized sector by allocating ‘protection’ for new construction. It seems that this development was partly the result of some individual changes in local political and administrative positions. Nevertheless as a result of this informal control, helped by the continuing high demand, Kibera experienced something approaching a real estate bonanza, and approximately 1400 new structures were built, tripling the population in 5 years. Thus in 1979 the population was 62,000. It is this new informal urban development that we shall now examine to illustrate the recent changes that have occurred within the provision of low-income shelter in Nairobi. We shall argue that the result has been that yesterday’s squatter is today’s tenant. In the next section we shall examine the mechanism of land allocation which was to result in this transformation.

5. THE INFORMAL ALLOCATION OF LAND The allocation of informal building rights gives access to a lucrative source of capital accumulation and is a major resource controlled by the local administration. As we have seen, since 1974 the local administration has taken control of the allocation of these building

rights: these rights are informal rather than legal and amount to an assurance of protection from demolition for individual allottees. Since the legality of this allocation process is at best debatable, political patronage within the public administration and wider political system was and is important in providing protection. Hence the local administration itself is a client of more powerful political backers. Indeed the recent history of ‘stoppgo’ regarding the availability of land is a function of shifts within these networks of political patronage. These networks are often internal within the Kenyan public administration; thus in many cases the landlords are also from the same public administration. This was true of 35% (i.e. 10 out of 29) of the large landlords whom we could identify. The local administration may be paying back favours, consolidating potential clients, rewarding friends or fellow tribesmen by informally giving out free land for urban development. Inevitably information on such matters is difficult to obtain but it is rumoured that bribes change hands as well. The process by which individuals use their position within the public sector generally to their own personal financial advantage has been well documented in Kenya. This ‘straddling’ behaviour between the two economic sectors is considered to be the hallmark of Kenya’s emergent bourgeoisie (Swainson, 1981). Nonacademic commentators might call it ‘corruption’. Within Nairobi generally the allocation of building rights is an important source of political patronage for politicians and the administration. In this respect we can again note how the ‘informal’ sector closely resembles the ‘formal’ sector. This interpretation is consistent with some of our data on landlords. Thus the predominance of Kikuyu among the large landlords in Kibera ~ 66% (71) of those we surveyed were Kikuyu while 22% (24) were Nubian - is probably a result of patronage by the predominantly Kikuyu administration and politicians attempting to consolidate their power base. The Nubians in this case were all relatively recent recipients of land for building and such allocations may have been made in order to forestall any potential opposition from them. Those individuals involved are often seen as ‘collaborators’ with ‘outsiders’ by the remainder of their ‘community’. 6. THE GROWTH OF THE RENTAL SECTOR To understand

the growth

of the rental sector

SQUATTERS OR TENANTS we need to examine the three functions which landlords must fulfil. They are: (a) access to land; (b) access to capital; (c) estate management. We have already seen how landlords secure land, and in this section we shall discuss the access to capital. Estate management involves the collection of rent, which is not always finding new tenants and sometimes easy, day-to-day maintenance. Clearly this function is only a constraint for absentee landlords, and will be discussed in Section I. The original squatter who starts to rent out a few rooms has no problems providing he has access to both land and capital (i.e. his own savings). This situation represents the emergent private rental sector in unauthorized settlements that has a long historical legacy within the ‘African locations’ within Nairobi (Bujra, 1973). However, there is an inherent contradiction in the expansion of a small-scale landlord’s operations. As his scale of operation increases and as access to land becomes politically controlled he may have difficulties securing land and capital, i.e. fulfilling functions (a) and (b). To solve this difficulty the small-scale landlord must look elsewhere. Thus he must use links with patrons to gain access to land and/or look elsewhere for additional capital funding. The result of both of these processes is that the small-scale operator loses his autonomy. Of course he can operate independently if he has (a) sufficient capital in relation to his venture and (b) access to land via his personal social networks. There are some members of the Nubian community who are able to fulfil these two functions through their own resources. However, given the profitability of the sector it seems that the pressures for small-scale landlords are to depend upon ‘external’ capital to increase the scale of their housing operations. From the other point of view this can be seen as one of the ways in which external capital penetrates this sector. Similarly the political control of land in unauthorized settlements facilitates the emergence of large-scale operations. This is because land may be directly allocated to those with sufficient capital who do not live in the area to invest in it. This allows for a scale of operation that is not restricted by the general poverty of the settlement. However, this is not to say that a small-scale sector does not also exist; it does. These are the mechanisms which encourage the commercialization of low-income housing and also its increasing dominance by large-scale landlords.

91

To sum up, the most obvious and important point about this rental sector is that it is a commercial operation, albeit technically illegal. The construction is sub-contracted and involves a division of labour. Unlike ‘subsistence shelter’ the production, consumption and ultimate ownership of the dwelling involve different individuals. The profits are extremely high. From one example of a lo-room structure we investi ated the annual capital return was f 131%. Thus after only nine months the landlord’s rental income is pure profit, since maintenance and running costs are more or less non-existent. The fact that the housing stock constructed is explicitly for rental reasons and not for owner-occupation is suggested by the average number of rooms per structure in the settlement which was 10.33. Similarly from our data we can calculate that the average landlord lets over twelve rooms. This data is totally at variance with the conventional view of the nature of urban squatting in the Third World.

7. THE DISTRIBUTION AND BACKGROUND OF OWNERSHIP The distribution of room ownership amongst the landlord group within the settlement is revealing.4 (See Table 1.) The 32Y0 of the landlords owning the smallest numbers of rooms each control only 10% of the available roomunits, while the ‘largest’ 6% are able to command fully 25% of the housing stock. Here we can see the sheer scale of ownership and its concentration. For example, four individual landlords control 5 7 1 rooms in Kibera or 5% of the entire housing stock, giving each landlord an ‘empire’ in excess of 100 room-units. While such a scale of operation is untypical, it is worth considering the financial rewards it represents. Within a year at most, landlords will be able to recoup their initial capital outlay,

Table 1. Distribution No. of rooms let

ofroom landlords

No. of landlords

o-7 8-15 16-29 30+

289 463 106 52

Total

910

(32%) (51%) (12%) (6%)

ownership

among

Total No. of rooms 1141 5039 2177 2762 11,119

(10%) (45%) (20%) (25%)

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WORLD DEVELOPMENT

and the rental income from 100 units after this will yield a monthly income of approximately lO,OOO/-- (055) (assuming an average roomrent of approximately loo/-a month). This income will also be tax-free, being impossible to declare. Even on a more modest scale, a landlord owning 30 units, will have a monthly income of 3000/-, after the initial capital is recouped, which is equivalent to the salaries in some middle-ranking white-collar jobs in Nairobi. However, it is important to realize that for some individuals this sector represents their only source of income. In particular for those who are landless and without employment in Nairobi this sector provides the income for their survival. Similarly this small-scale urban landlordism provides an important source of economic security for many women for whom alternatives are closed. Indeed this sector seems to be a favoured place for prostitutes to invest their hard-earned money and retire. Consequently while some of these landlords are welloff it would be a mistake to underestimate the number of those from the urban poor who are dependent solely upon this sector for their

livelihood. Indeed for the landless it may be their only source of potential capital accumulation. Nevertheless it is apparent from our figures and from direct observation that the capital involved in the large-scale operations could not be exclusively generated locally. Partly in keeping with this there was a high level of absentee landlordism among those landlords who let out more than 20 units. Thus 64% lived elsewhere in Nairobi or Kenya - some lived in other cities and rural areas, while 14% were absentee but lived elsewhere within the settlement - itself an indication of multiple ownership, leaving only 22% living on site with their tenants as resident landlords.

8. WHO ARE THE LANDLORDS AND TENANTS? Table 2 presents a social profile of Kibera. Thus we have attempted to relate the social backgrounds of landlords and tenants in terms of the IL0 income profile of Kenya: (1) the

Table 2. Profile of settlement

%

IL0 urban categories 1976

Owners of medium enterprises in commerce, industry and services (b) Rentiers

Monthly income

% Landlords

Large (>20 units) landlords

17

31

22

38

48

55

31

37

6

% Tenants

1 (a)

2,5 OO/plus

Professionals ii’,Managers and top bureaucrats 2 (a)

Skilled employees formal sector

3 (a)

Clerical employees in formal

1

1,666/2::00,-

(b)

sector Semi-skilled employees formal sector

500/-

in

$66/Cc)

Owners of some informal enterprises

4 (a)

Unskilled employees formal sector

5 (a)

Informal sector employees and smaller entrepreneurs

in

sector

250/5:,-

Source:

ILO, Plamin~for

14

250/-

Basic :Vecds irz Ke?z)‘a (Geneva:

1979),

Table 2.11, p. 43.

SQUATTERS OR TENANTS

tenant population in our intensive survey, (2) the landlord population in this survey, and (3) the large-scale landlords (>20 room-units) throughout the settlement. We can see how some of the landlord group are from markedly different social backgrounds from their tenants. It would be fair to say that no Kenyan occupational group is not involved in some way or another with the Kibera housing market whether as landlord or tenant. It is also worth noting the variety within both the landlord and the tenant populations. Thus at one extreme there are doctors, top civil servants and managers from both the public and private sectors among the landlords. However, as we mentioned earlier there is a significant landlord group from amongst the urban poor. Similarly it would be a mistake to assume that all the tenants are on the bread line. There are some who hold down middle-ranking clerical jobs who may choose to live in such areas to minimize their expenditure on housing. At the other extreme are tenants who are some of the poorest in Nairobi without a regular income and for whom each day represents a battle for survival. In the middle, as the table shows, there is a degree of similarity between the circumstances of landlords and tenants. However, suffice it to say that if all the landlords actually lived in the settlement the impression of inequality would be greater than it is today. Even today the differences between the objective conditions of many inhabitants is already striking.

9. LANDLORD-TENANT

RELATIONS

We now examine relations between landlords and tenants, a subject which relates to the estate management function we identified in Section 6. Within commercialized settlements landlord and tenant relations are generally hostile. The average rent is 99/for an average room of 15 sq.m constructed from mud and wattle with a corrugated iron roof. The rent levels are not subject to legal controls but their upward movement is constrained by what tenants can afford to pay, i.e. rents only rise when incomes rise. Thus for example in May 1980 when the minimum wage was raised and despite explicit Presidential warnings to the contrary the rent level also immediately increased. From our survey the average tenant spends 14% of his income on housing services. While this is less than the international agencies’ arbitrary figure of 20% for low-income urban dwellers it is important to understand its

93

economic context. The average tenant household income in our survey was 756/- a month, but a significant group (38%) had incomes below 600/-a month and/or suffered from insecurity of income. The figure of 20% might seem low but the crucial point is that both World Bank consultants and the Kenyan Trade Union Organization (COTU) estimate that 625/a month are required for a family in Nairobi to fulfill their basic nutritional requirements alone (COTU, 1980; Kenya By-law Study, 1980). The general poverty of the settlement is borne out by the fact that in one section of the settlement the Catholic Relief Service estimate that 50% of the children suffer from malnutrition as judged by ratios of weight and height to age. In such a situation it is not surprising that the payment of rent represents a major financial difficulty for most tenants. Therefore to suggest that such individuals are not paying enough on housing, as are the international agencies, is little short of criminal. As might be expected landlord-tenant relations are centred around the monthly rent payment, the ultimate sanctions for which are and immediate eviction. physical violence Examples of both are fairly common, and horror stories of such behaviour abound. However, there is also some variation in landlords’ behaviour towards their tenants’ problems which range from sympathy to total insensitivity. There seems to be no systematic explanation for this variation, e.g. large landlords are not consistently tougher. Indeed, paradoxically it may well be that it is the smaller-scale landlords who are socially nearest to their tenants who are the hardest landlords, the reason being that for these landlords their tenants’ rent is their sole source of livelihood. Nevertheless 39% (30) of the tenants in our survey must pay their rent on the nail. Unfortunately for tenants, flexibility in payment is important as they attempt to meet regular payments from an irregular income. Thus insecurity of income further compounds the general poverty problem. Those who are unable to borrow money from kin or employer are sooner or later forced to go to the money-lender. Here the rate, albeit illegal, is 20% a month. Clearly such a situation further impoverishes the urban poor. Turning now to landlord-tenant relations from a landlord’s -- or estate management perspective, we find that many employ intermediaries to carry out the tasks of rent collection, maintenance and choice of new tenants. From our interview survey 28% (24) of the tenants reported that their landlord used such

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WORLD DEVELOPMENT

an intermediary; 48% of the tenants also received receipts for their rent. It is for those landlords who do not live in Kibera that this estate management function may prove a difficulty; for example the rent collector may run off with the rent money. Intermediaries may often be used to disguise the identity of the owner; since it is politically embarrassing for affluent Kenyans to be seen to be involved in such cut-throat activities. The ruthlessness and inequality of some aspects of this sector would appear to offend even the highly instrumental and capitalistic ‘moral norms’ of modern Kenya. (‘Eat or be eaten’ as the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o puts it.) Nothing typifies the social transformation that the commercialization process has wrought in unauthorized settlements as much as this formalization of the landlord-tenant relation combined with a refusal to ‘admit’ to ownership. Clearly the fact that individual landlords should seek to hide their identity says a lot about the nature of this unofficial housing market.

10. THE IMPACT OF COMMERCIALIZATION Increasingly therefore we are seeing a capitalist rental housing market operating within unauthorized settlements. A number of effects of this can be identified. A first effect is the tendency for the poorest individuals in such settlements to be increasingly pushed out via the market. At the moment it is still too early to see the impact of this process. Clearly at one level tenants may move to cheaper rental accommodation. This process appears to be occurring within Kibera. Indeed there is the suggestion of a ‘bumping down’ phenomenon that has been noted elsewhere in Nairobi. Here higher-income inhabitants are increasingly being forced to look for accommodation in previously low income areas. The second phenomenon may involve individuals who cannot afford to stay in the market reverting to subsistence shelter elsewhere. This seems to be possible at the extreme periphery of Nairobi. Hence we might postulate a ‘rent curve’ nearing zero at some distance from the city centre. Whether this will remain as a viable housing option is a crucial question for the future. The commercialization of squatter housing is also having some interesting social implications. Thus the traditional U-shaped nature of Swahili architecture is being replaced by functionally cheaper single blocks. The social advantages of

the former in terms of semi-public space are abandoned in favour of the profitability of the latter. Profit maximizing behaviour also seems to be increasing among landlords: increasingly room sizes in new structures are 3 m by 3 m which is the minimum size that will fit two beds. A third effect of the capitalist nature of this sector is the way economic motivations override ethnic loyalties and prejudices. Thus landlords prefer mixed tribe blocks presumably to make collective action by their tenants more difficult. Also such a strategy reduces the chance of the landlords’ tribesmen attempting to seek favours in the payment of rent on the basis of some tribal loyalty. However, despite this we came across two instances where the tenants appeared to negotiate collectively with their landlord with some measure of success. A rent strike in a shanty town may not be that far off. Another result of this commercialization process is the increasing importance of mobility within such settlements. This is in strong contrast to a subsistence shelter economy which has very limited mobility as individuals remain in the houses they have constructed. However high rates of mobility are compatible with the operation of a rental housing market. Our data from Kibera revealed substantial residential mobility. From the survey, 56% of the tenant sample had lived elsewhere in Kibera, which includes 33% who have lived in two separate Kibera ‘villages’ while 6% had actually lived in three separate ‘villages’. The estimated average length of stay in each room is 2.58 years which gives a comparable residential mobility to tenants in the US which is popularly reckoned to be the world’s most residentially mobile society. Another impact of commercialization is that for the tenants or ex-potential squatters the problem has moved from insecurity from mass demolition by the state of an entire settlement to insecurity from individual eviction by landlords for failing to pay the rent. Here we can capitalism’s general tendency towards see individualization, hence increasingly the strain of Nairobi’s housing problem is being borne by the landlord rather than the state. Finally we examine a second stage in the commercialization process which is starting to develop: this is that unauthorized housing is itself becoming marketable. Thus it is starting to become possible for landlords to sell such rental blocks. In one case it seems that a prospective buyer was able to raise a 49,000/(E2722) loan from a bank for the purpose. This ‘second stage’ capitalist transaction is not

SQUATTERS OR TENANTS dependent upon political connections and gives some indication of the real value of such connections, Thus a hypothetical landlord in a two-year period might do the following (conservative estimates from our own data): build a lo-room unit for 12,000/-, rent it out for two years (28,000/-), then sell the block for 40,000/-, which would result in a net overall profit of 56,800/(Z3155). To achieve such a return within two years on an initial investment of only 12,000/(5666) is staggering; such are the rewards in modern Kenya for knowing the right people. The existence of this second-stage market suggests that it is still considered to be a safe investment for individuals’ economic security and that there is a general lack of alternative economic openings. It also suggests that some individuals are excluded from patronage networks which would enable them to buy such property at 12,000/rather than 40,000/-. Interestingly, a similar process has been noted in Latin settlements where the American squatter majority of inhabitants bought their plots from original squatters (Gilbert, 1981). Here the original squatters are getting a cash reward for their nerve in occupying land, whereas in our case landlords who sell out are realizing a monetary gain for being connected to the local administration.

11. CONCLUSION It is worth re-emphasizing that the housing market we have been describing is not supposed to exist according to the conventional view; it has no legal foundation and politically and socially it is convenient for the Keyan elite to ignore it. Capitalism’s ability to transcend social barriers and situations and ‘revolutionize’ the productive forces together with its inherent exploitation are well illustrated in the shanty towns of Nairobi. At a policy level this commercialization encouraged. Government is being process policy is that Nairobi’s housing shortage is to be solved by the market. Part of this policy, itself encouraged by the international agencies, is to slowly move towards the recognition and ultimate legalization of unauthorized settlements which will ease the operation of the private sector therein. Hence alongside this commercialization process there is a parallel trend towards political recognition and legitimation, albeit given reluctantly. For the state it seems easier and more effective in terms of social control and economics (tax, rateable

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etc.) to politically and financially values, integrate such settlements than to demolish them. Within Nairobi the sheer scale of this unauthorized private sector is important in encouraging its integration. Unfortunately the extreme poverty of such urban areas may make such integrationist policies difficult to pursue. Paradoxically one of the ‘advantages’ of earlier squatters in Nairobi was that they were effectively able to ‘exit’ from the housing market and thus live in urban areas rent free. In a situation of increased political control, unless one has good access to the administration, that option virtually ceases to exist; thus one must search for a room to rent. Consequently it seems that the urban poor are being forced into a capitalist rent relation they cannot afford without risk to their health. The danger here is of a relatively well housed but malnourished population. Thus urban poverty may well become less visible as it is effectively forced off the streets and into the living room. Such a situation has been documented in such diverse places as Singapore and Scotland which suggests that such an idea is not as absurd as it sounds. Indeed the evidence of Nairobi’s site and service housing scheme points towards such a situation. To sum up, the question of the importance of housing that lay behind much of John Turner’s work needs to be posed again. Thus ‘it is not what it is but what it does for you that (Ward, 1976). Clearly shanty town matters’ housing is an important source of capital accumulation but at what expense and to whose benefit? Is housing so important that we should push individuals towards malnutrition as they divert more and more of their meagre incomes away from food towards housing? The Devil’s Advocate might suggest that the urban poor might do better to eat all their money and sleep on the streets rather than enter into a housing market they cannot afford. This was the advantage of conventional squatting. However, as we have seen it is beginning to look as if the subsistence shelter aspect of urban squatting is a transitional urban phenomenon. The illegal occupation aspect may remain but the housing stock is becoming a commercial operation. Ignoring the illegal occupation aspect, it is pertinent to ask whether ‘squatting’ is actually different in any relevant economic sense from renting. Rather than stressing the differences we might start looking at the similarities. Thus the political integration and commercialization of such settlements, whether for owner-occupation, as in Latin America, or for renting, as in Nairobi, is becoming the norm. Within Nairobi the squatter is now a tenant.

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NOTES 1. In this case we are only concerned with commercialization of such housing for rental reasons. In this paper we are therefore excluding such housing built commercially for owner-occupation. The latter is more typical of Latin America.

if one invests 100 units at the beginning of the year, by the end of the year one will have recouped 131. While it is unknown to me I can only assume that Nellie Temple’s earlier figure of 171% was calculated in the same way.

2. Throughout this paper we shall use ‘unauthorized’ housing and settlements as a general term that refers to buildings and areas that do not comply with Kenyan building standards. This includes both our subsistence shelter and commercial rental categories. We should note that the land is sometimes legally owned in unauthorized settlements in Nairobi, e.g. Mathare Valley. It is for this reason more useful to focus on the housing status in such areas.

4. The fieldwork data used in this paper comes from three main sources: direct observation; an intensive landlord and tenant survey; and an overall landlord survey for the new sections of Kibera. The overall landlord survey forms the basis for section 7 while the more intensive tenant survey forms the basis for sections 9 and 10. Section 8 is based on a combination of both. It is again worth mentioning that due to the sensitive nature of the subject reliable data was not always available. Consequently we have sometimes had to rely more on ‘impressionistic’ sources.

3. This 13 1% annual capital return figure is calculated without any discounting. Thus it simply means that

REFERENCES Bujra, J. M., ‘Punwani: The Politics of Property’, unpublished SSRC report (1973). Chana, T. and H. Morrison, ‘Housing systems in the low income sector of Nairobi, Kenya’, Ekistics, Vol. 36 (September 1973). COTU (Central Organization of Trade Unions (Kenya)), ‘The Cost of Living in Kenya as Related to I!ow Income Workers’ (1980). Edwards, M., ‘Cities of tenants: renting among the urban poor in Latin America’, in A. Gilbert et al., urbanization in Contemporary Latin America (London: Wiley, 1982). Gilbert, A., ‘Pirates and invaders: land acquisition in urban Colombia and Venezuela’, World Development, Vol. 7, No. 7 (1981). ILO, Planning for Basic Needs in Kenya (Geneva: 1979).

Kenya Low-cost By-law Study (1980). Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Petals of Blood (London: Heinemann, 1977). Roberts, B., Cities of Peasants (London: Edward Arnold, 1978). Swainson, N., The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya 1918~1977 (London: Heinemann, 1981). Temple, N., ‘Redevelopment of Kibera’ (Draft, 1973). Turner, J. F. C., Housing by People (London: Marion Boyars, 1976). Van Zwanenberg, R., ‘History and theory of urban poverty in Nairobi: the problem of slum development’, Journal of East African Research and Development, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1972). Ward, C., in J. F. C. Turner, op. cit. (1976).