Wamuzi News Ke
Kenya’s premier affordable housing initiative has surprisingly come to a standstill, as per the recent statistics provided by the State Department for Housing and Urban Development.
The shocking fact is that even after the government poured in more than Sh81.4 billion over three years, only less than 300,000 Kenyans had signed up to buy homes by June 2025.
This number is considerably lower than the government’s initial estimates and is now acutely questioning the whole issue of public trust and the efficacy of the policy at the same time.The report informs that just 292,326 individuals had registered on the government’s Boma Yangu platform, which is only a little more than half of the 565,800 registrations that the program had set as its target.
The figures represent approximately 0.5 percent of the entire population of Kenya, which is 53.3 million, indicating an unexpected and disappointing reaction to a project that was expected to be a major breakthrough in solving the housing crisis in the country.
The figures were disclosed in a fiscal planning document as part of the submission for the budget cycle of 2027/28, which has led to an urgent questioning in the political and policy circles as to why public money has not resulted in an equivalent demand or supply.
The planners in the government had expected a lot of registrations and very active participation from the Kenyans who would like to acquire affordable homes, but the big difference in the actual figures has brought into question the strategy of implementation and the effectiveness of public communication.
Moreover, the Affordable Housing Programme has been able to provide nothing but a small number of units when compared to the high targets it set up for itself, which has contributed to the feeling of disorganization.
Just 2,075 housing units were finished in the country during the July 2022 to June 2025 period, which was a mere fraction of the government’s original plan for hundreds of thousands of new homes. The construction of the current projects is still in progress, with the developments of the affordable, social, and institutional units amounting to tens of thousands in different phases of development, but the speed of progress has been very low.
Some of the reasons for falling short of expectations were pointed out by the officials to be the lengthy process of court litigations and regulatory delays that modified the original project timelines.
The officials made it clear that court litigations and the absence of critical housing regulations in the early phases of the program had been the main reason behind the slowed construction activity as well as the stalled disbursement of the funds.
“Over the past several years of aiming at very high targets, the numbers of deliveries and take-ups have been very much below the expectations,” a high-ranked housing official stated in a budget document that was submitted along with the proposals for the next budget.
“The registration numbers are still under the expected levels despite the large amount of money put in, and the number of dwelling units finished is still very low.”
