Public to give opinion on housing levy bill this week

Public hearings by the National Assembly on the controversial Affordable Housing Bill commence this week and are expected to cover 19 counties.

The House through the Departmental Committees on Finance and National Planning and that on Housing, Urban Planning and Public Works have lined up public meetings to jointly collect views from the public on the Bill across 19 counties, starting Wednesday, January 17 for two weeks.

According to a program placed in the local dailies and shared across other communication platforms, scheduled hearings will see the legislators visit Narok, Embu, Homabay, Kiambu, Vihiga, Kisii, Kirinyaga, Machakos, Uasin Gishu and Turkana counties.

Other devolved units where lawmakers will collect views include Baringo, Nairobi, Wajir, Nakuru, Nyandarua, Tana River, Kilifi, Nairobi and Mombasa Counties.

The Affordable Housing Bill 2023 has already undergone the First Reading. The Bill was born out of the need to create a comprehensive framework for the affordable Housing Program following a High Court order that declared the housing levy unconstitutional.

The Affordable Housing Bill (National Assembly Bill No 75 of 2023) sponsored by the Leader of the Majority Kimani Ichung’wah, seeks to provide a legal framework for the establishment of the Affordable Housing Fund, access to affordable housing and to give effect to Article 43(1)(b) of the Constitution on the right to accessible and adequate housing.

The Bill further seeks to impose the Affordable Housing Levy to finance the provision of affordable housing and associated social and physical infrastructure.

In anticipation of the scheduled public hearings, Ichungw’a last week sought to clarify the public hearings following a recent court order that had halted the public participation process in a manner prescribed on an earlier advertisement in the dailies.

The advertisement had requested the public to send their written submissions as opposed to the current methodology where lawmakers will directly go to the public to seek their views on the Bill.

The High Court sitting in Kisumu had last month issued conservatory orders stopping public participation on the Bill on the manner prescribed in the advertisement then until the matter is determined.

House Committees

The orders were issued after litigants moved to court shortly after the two House Committees in a notice published in the dailies on December 9, 2023, invited the public and stakeholders to submit memoranda on the Bill.

The High Court barred Parliament from conducting public participation on the Affordable Housing Bill, 2023, following a petition filed in court challenging how the House was conducting the process.

 Parliament had introduced the Bill after a three-judge bench in November last year ruled the Housing Levy Fund unconstitutional following a failure by MPs to conduct a public hearing on the matter among other issues.

Public participation

Ichung’wah noted that the orders by the High Court only apply in respect of the conduct of public participation in the manner indicated in the public participation advert issued on December 9, 2023, on submission of memoranda but they did not entirely halt the public participation process.

“The orders did not prohibit Parliament from conducting any other form of public participation including undertaking public hearings across the country on the Bill, or the ordinary stakeholder engagements with key sectors, experts, workers, employers, informal sector, political parties, civil society and marginalised communities etc,” he observed.