Living in a Govt House?
Don't Throw Stones...
Last week, several hundred people marched in the streets of Kampala to demand their "right" to be housed by the government.
What had happened was that over 10 years ago, a housing estate in the neighbourhood of Naguru was condemned by the city authorities as unfit for human habitation. Now, it is criminal to continue living in a condemned structure because by doing so you increase the chances of disease developing and spreading. Under normal circumstances, you will be arrested and the condemned structure razed.
But because the city council had other priorities, people continued living in the shanties, which had been constructed in the 1940s for African clerks and labourers. In quite a few cases, the original tenants had sold off the "goodwill" � the official tenancy status � to unsuspecting victims. When you are the official "sitting tenant", you get to pay a ridiculously low rent to the government and either live in the house or rent it out at 100 percent illegal profit at market rates to someone else.
The even brighter side for the profiteers is that whenever public houses are sold off, the so-called sitting tenant has first priority to buy. And there has never been an instance when a sitting tenant has failed to buy � he merely gets a genuine buyer who gives him an advance to pay the government and then makes an killing by immediately selling to the buyer at market rates.
So for a decade, the rotting structures have been occupied by people who either bought goodwill or are tenants subletting from landlords who never invested a cent in building the structures. Now there is a plan to develop the over 150-acre area, which is close to the city centre.
So the Kampala City Council is telling the residents to vacate the illegal structures. The people are protesting, asking the government for alternative accommodation. And instead of reprimanding the protestors for living in condemned structures, the politicians are listening, telling them to be calm.
The protestors have not paused to ask themselves where the other 24.5 million Ugandans who are not occupying government houses live. Incidentally, the "tenants" were paying $10 to $25 a month in rent. But when they were given the final notice to quit last year, KCC stopped charging them rent. Perhaps some occupants have continued to pay their "landlords" who are the official tenants but the owners of the place � KCC and the taxpayers � have not been collecting rent for some time, having forfeited it as notice to the tenants.
Nevertheless, the tenants now feel cheated and don�t want to vacate. If a landlord wants you to vacate his premises and gives you adequate notice, why should you abuse his property rights by resisting?
Of course, the ringleaders of the protest have a different interest in mind � that of buying the plots as sitting tenants, and making a killing selling them off to genuine developers.
Which brings us back to this sitting tenant myth. Now that government agencies are divesting themselves of thousands of houses, why should the sitting tenants have a right to be first to purchase a plot or flat under the condominium arrangement?
Why not give the first priority to the "non-sitting tenants" who have not enjoyed the house? We tend to allow upside-down arrangements to continue unchallenged, just because it has always been that way. Government houses are owned by all taxpayers, whereas only a few have the privilege of living in them and paying low rents. At the time of selling it off, the person who has been enjoying the below-market rent should move out and give a chance to the one who has not enjoyed those subsidies, to buy the house. At least that sounds more like justice.
Alternatively, sell the plots/houses to the highest bidder, be he a sitting tenant or not, and maximise the revenue accruing to the seller � the taxpayer.
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Joachim Buwembo is Editor of The Sunday Vision of Kampala.
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