MPs to conduct public hearings on Housing Bill in 19 counties

The National Assembly is set to commence public hearings on the Affordable Housing Bill, 2023 this week

The Affordable Housing Bill (National Assembly Bill No. 75 of 2023) is sponsored by Majority leader Kimani Ichung’wah and has already undergone the first reading.

The hearings will begin on January 17.

The House through the Departmental Committees on Finance and National Planning and that on Housing, Urban Planning and Public Works has lined up public meetings to collect views from the public on the Bill in 19 counties.

The scheduled hearings will see the legislators visit Narok, Embu, Kisii, Kirinyaga, Homabay, Kiambu, Vihiga, Machakos, Uasin Gishu and Turkana.

Others are Baringo, Nairobi, Wajir, Nakuru, Nyandarua, Tana River, Kilifi, Nairobi and Mombasa counties.

“It is notified that the committees that have resolved, with the approval of the Speaker of the National Assembly-to facilitate public participation and involvement by consulting a wide cross-section of stakeholder and technical experts and by way of public hearings in 19 counties,” reads the notice in part.

The forums were 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.

It 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.

It 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, Ichung'wah on Wednesday last week sought to clarify the public hearings following a recent court order by the High Court sitting in Kisumu that had halted the public participation process in a manner prescribed in an earlier advertisement in the dailies.

The advertisement then 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 orders were issued after litigants moved to court soon 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.

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 marginalized communities,” he said.