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{
    "id": 775937,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/775937/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 196,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Mbarire",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 78,
        "legal_name": "Cecily Mutitu Mbarire",
        "slug": "cecily-mbarire"
    },
    "content": "This progressive Bill of Rights in Article 43 of the Constitution states: “(1) Every person has the right – (b) to accessible and adequate housing, and to reasonable standards of sanitation.” The same Bill of Rights in Article 21 states: “(2) The State shall take legislative, policy and other measures, including the setting of standards, to achieve the progressive realisation of the rights guaranteed under Article 43.” Today, we are going to deal with that particular provision in the Bill of Rights. I think this House has been given a chance to ensure the realisation of this particular right to housing. We are aware that the Jubilee Government, led by His Excellency the President, has come up with four pillars which it wants to run with in the next five years. They have come up with an ambitious pillar of building 500,000 affordable houses within the next five years, both in the main cities and other small towns across the country. It is hoped that this particular pillar will afford the creation of 350,000 jobs within that period which is also seen as one way of ensuring that we take care of the many jobless young people we have in this country. In the last Parliament, I was lucky to have been in the Departmental Committee on Transport, Public Works and Housing. We got a chance to visit Brazil, where we learnt of a very important programme which the then president and government had initiated. The programme was called Minha Casa Minha Vida, which means, my house, my life. That project was started in 2009. At the time we visited them in 2015 they had been able to house 10.5 million low-income earners whom they had placed in 2.6 million housing units. Therefore, as a nation, we have got to do the same in order to take care of the low-income earners. This Policy aims at ensuring that they spell out the roles of the various stakeholders in the housing sector namely; the national Government, the county governments and the private sector players so that they know the role of each of these stakeholders. This Policy has identified the major gaps which are bedeviling the low-income earners in so far as housing is concerned, one of them being the fact that low-income earners cannot afford mortgage. This is because in Kenya housing is very expensive as most Members have identified through our mortgage scheme. It is not possible for one with Kshs20 million to be able to get a house in certain areas. One has to go to their pockets to add onto that amount to be able to get the house they wish to have. We know that the cost of housing has almost gone up 10 times what it used to be 15 years ago, when I first came to this House."
}