Nairobi old estates residents condemn evictions over rent arrears

Residents of several old estates in Nairobi have strongly criticized the Nairobi County Government over ongoing evictions tied to rent arrears.

The affected estates include Woodley, Kariobangi South, Buru Buru, Ziwani, New and Old Ngara, Uhuru, Pumwani, and Umoja.

 In a unified petition presented Wednesday, the residents demanded that the county respect a 2019 rent waiver that was formally gazetted under the administration of former Governor Mike Sonko.

“The rent waiver constitutes a lawful, official, and enforceable county government commitment to all its tenants. Rent arrears accumulated before November 2019 were therefore waived,” said David Oyombe, spokesperson for Woodley Estate residents, while reading the petition.

The residents are also protesting the forceful takeover of privately owned houses in Woodley Estate, some of which have valid title deeds. They called for an immediate halt to the evictions and for the county to engage in dialogue with affected tenants.

The tenants said they also removed Lydia Mathia from the position of Chief Officer of Housing and Urban Renewal for what they termed gross misconduct and abuse of office.

Oyombe said: “It is the binding and recognised obligation of this county government administration of Governor Johnson Sakaja to honour and implement but not invalidate retrospectively, which is not permissible under the law.”

Oyombe was speaking on Wednesday along City Hall Way, after a peaceful protest and unsuccessful attempt to present the petition to Governor Sakaja’s office.

The petition says the invalidation of the waiver “has caused injustice, confusion and hardship to the affected tenants whom for the last seven years have lived in the houses, diligently paying their current rent and believing they had no rent arrears.”

He said the eviction process going on is unlawful even after several attempts to present their petition.

The petition says such policy shift and demand for debt requires time for tenants to look for funds to pay, but Ms Mathia has only given them seven days to pay an unexpected historically large debt.

“The tenants were unable to pay the waived debt. She descended on them with hired goons who stole their properties and evicted them from their houses,” says the petition.

It adds: “Your excellence, it’s therefore unjust and illegal to carryout evictions based on your invalidation of the rent waiver, without allowing its legitimacy to be determined through due process,” it adds, blaming Ms Mathia for what the residents said out rightly refusing to comply with court orders.

Under the forceful takeover of private houses in Woodley with title deeds, the petition says in 1990, the City Council of Nairobi passed a resolution to sell “non-strategic Council assets” which included Woodley Estate to sitting tenants.

It says only 29 tenants purchased the houses they have been living in at a total of Sh1.6 million each and were issued with title deeds.

Subsequent administrations, it says unlawfully cancelled the sale to tenants instead of rectifying any irregularities and continuing with the sale to the remaining rightful sitting tenants.

“Only the High Court is mandated to cancel a title deed after due process, but the Nairobi County government has refused to refund monies paid to it during the purchase or compensate the tenants who bought the houses,” it says.

It adds: The current Chief

Officer Mathia has engaged in illegal demanding rent arrears for 32 years from the 29 title holders and when they refused to pay, she sent hired goons to their properties who invaded private poverty, robbed people of money, jewellery, household goods worth millions,” it says.

The residents in an eight-point demands want the immediate reinstitution and validation of rent waiver, Governor Sakaja to invalidate all evictions done illegally without court orders.

Also, it demands that evicted tenants rerun to their houses and be compensated for the lost time and court orders to be complied with and Mathia to be removed from office and be investigated by Plica for crimes committed on residents by eviction squads.

The petition also demands for a joint accounting team including county finance officials and representative of the tenants to calculate each tenants’ accounts and provide a true and valid status figure for the accounts.