From Slum Upgrading to Slum Hypergrading

To say that little change had taken place over the years in our almost ancient slums would be an understatement. We had lived as a country with the shame of slums like Mathare and Kibera since colonial days. Just as we had never added an inch of railway since the last one was laid by the colonial government, we had just the same never changed the iron sheets that roofed our expansive slums. These were not low cost housing that could be upgraded to decent standards. But dreadfully these were ghostly tin roofed shades not even decent for stray pigs. Unlike torn undergarments that we do well to hide from the public, we had as a nation walked around shamelessly with our torn under garments worn over our heads for generations. 

In African traditional society we had no slums; therefore slums are un-African just as much as they are inhuman. How unfitting it is then that in our modern time slums could be associated with Africa as if it was part of our culture. Slums would have found no place in our traditional society as we lived in a totally different socio-economic setup. However every country that had undergone some level of industrialization had had to deal with slums and unplanned human settlements. But all countries did not live with slums indefinitely. They found a way to deal with such inequality in human settlement. Nobody sets out to live in inhuman conditions where even the most natural of acts is curtailed by circumstances. The exodus of the populace from the spacious rural areas to already crowded urban centers in search of a livelihood had imprisoned many in urban inadequacy. So it’s not a surprise that many who travel into slums or are born there are condemned in a never ending circle of imprisonment from these bar less prisons. 

The best subsequent governments could do after independence was to assume that there were no slums. To remove them from service delivery maps, to deny such settlements the decency of basic services such as sanitation, water and security. All this in a bid to generate plausible deniability in their conscience of the existence of slums. So slum dwellers were left to scavenge for even the most essential of services. They had to forcefully put up illegal water connections, dangerously tap electricity from overhead power lines, dig trenches on their doorsteps for drainage, turn their sitting rooms into toilets and turn disposable foodstuffs into meals for their children.

So you can imagine the relief that met the announcement that we were going to do away with each and every slum in Kenya. Starting in Nairobi and rolling out the same master plan to distant towns and cities. Starting with the biggest slums in Nairobi and moving down to the last slum settlement anywhere in this glorious city of Nairobi. Though we had lived with slums forever, we believed this transformation was possible. Because we lived in a time of singular political will and purpose, a time of patriotic optimism, a time of visionary nationalism. We believed first, that it could be done, and weighed approaches next, because if it could be done anywhere in the world, it could definitely be done in this magical country, known around the world as Kenya.  

The whole transformation of our urban landscape rested on this prism: That when it comes to real estate location is everything. Slums were not located in the furthest corners of our cities but were ideally located near highways, industrial parks and central business districts. Slums were not built vertically but horizontally. Being the enterprising people that Kenyans are, just like someone had taken the wool from our eyes and suddenly we could all see the high return on investment that slum land offered. We had arrived at the crux of the age of progress and urban renewal. The prospects of the new vision for our urban poor and their pathetic settlements could not be resisted even by the dullest of pessimists.  

The hyper grading of slums started with the government appropriating all the land that slums were built on. The government could legally appropriate land for development purposes if the project was deemed beneficial to the country as a whole. For example when they wanted to build a road or say a port. Slum hyper grading was given the same significance and a prominent position in the whole scheme of nation building. Previous owners/landlords of these slum lands had the option of being compensated in cash or through shares in the new building scheme. 

Once the land had been appropriated, a registration of all residents and their households were done through community development organizations that worked in the slums and a government agency for transparency purposes. The civil society also took up the responsibility of selling this idea of slum hyper grading to the slum dwellers. They educated them where knowledge was lacking, they trained them on how to take advantage of this massive reconstruction scheme, and they also registered them as laborers in the same.

The next phase was restructuring of the slums and value addition to the land so to speak. This involved construction of tarmac roads and pavements that crisscrossed the whole slum land. Living square patches of slum houses in between these tarmac streets complete with street names. Electricity substations and transformers were evenly distributed throughout the slum land. These hyper slums were the first housing schemes to get complete network of fiber optic cables covering the whole slum area. A network of piped water was set up complete with water hydrants strategically placed on every street. A proper drainage and sewer system was built underground in anticipation of the population expected to live in this hyper housing scheme. Space for state of the art schools, hospitals and markets was also set aside.

With slum land now primed, it was time to bring in the private investors to do the actual construction of the high-rise buildings. In the beginning the idea was to have different housing locations in the slum lands for the original dwellers and the new comers expected to take advantage of this housing scheme. But this idea was quickly shot down as it was tantamount to social segregation when what we hope for was the social re-integration of our society. It was agreed that since only a handful of slum dwellers were social pariahs, programs would be put in place to take care of them and therefore eliminate the social threats that they might have posed to the new comers. Stringent security measures coupled with viable economic empowerment measures were carefully put into place. So original slum dwellers were allowed to live in the same high-rise buildings as the new comers. Usually the first, second and even third floors of this multi-storied apartment complex were reserved for original slum dwellers and the rest of the floors were reserved for newcomers. These upper floors that were not occupied by original slum dwellers were owned by private investors and government.

Unlike former housing intervention schemes that ended with former slum dwellers selling their new homes and rebuilding slums somewhere else. In the slum hyper grading scheme registered slum dwellers and their household were not allowed to sell or transfer their homes for at least 10 years. Regular inspections in the homes to make sure they still occupied the homes were carried out. Since their particulars were stored it was also impossible for them to benefit from future housing projects in other slums. 

It is also common knowledge that a golden or crystal prison is still a prison and without improving the economic status of slum residents they will continue suffering only this time in well painted homes. That’s why the government shares in the housing scheme were converted into a welfare scheme for the original slum dwellers. Whereby original slum dwellers received financial welfare support every month that increased their household incomes.