McCauley Wycliff
Member
Tenants who owe City Hall millions of shillings in rent risk property seizure and evictions as the county moves to recover the money amid its dismal internal revenue collections.
City Hall in a notice last Friday warned thousands of tenants with rent arrears from May 2019 to clear the debts immediately or risk losing their property and being locked out of the houses.
The tenants had by March 2019 defaulted on rent estimated at more than Sh224 million, some running for more than five years.
The defaulters have hurt City Hall’s efforts to meet internal revenue targets and free up more funds to fund provision of services like health and construction of roads.
“The tenants must now pay rent in full with effect from the 1st May, 2019, failure to which enforcement actions including evictions and impounding of household goods shall commence,” County Executive Committee Member for Finance and Economic Planning Allan Igambi said in a notice last Friday.
The county has in efforts to increase compliance waived rent arrears of up to April 30, 2019 to ease the debt burden on city residents. City Hall estimates to have over 17,000 tenants in its old houses but low compliance and lack of resources to nab the defaulters has denied the county millions of shillings from the revenue stream. Data shows that City Hall raised Sh296.59 million in the six months to last December against the target of Sh606 million for the year to June.
In the year ended last June, City Hall collected Sh495 million from house rent, missing its target by Sh120 million. City Hall is mulling a shift in its tenancy agreements where tenants will be signing a two-year lease to prevent accumulation of rent arrears.
The houses that are however dilapidated are in old city estates like Uhuru, Jeevanjee, Old Ngara, Pangani and Ngong Road estates where the majority of government officials used to live.
City Hall started demolishing majority of the houses in 2019 to pave way for 100,000 units for slightly more than 600,000 city residents mostly living in estates that were built in the colonial era.