Housing and Water Insecurity in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements

Abstract

Presently, about one billion people reside in informal and slum settlements around the world, creating an ongoing development challenge. Slum settlements are the most deprived and excluded type of informal settlements, characterized by large agglomerations of dilapidated housing located in hazardous urban land, lacking formal supply of basic services such as housing, water, sanitation, and so on. (Habitat, 2015). Informal settlements grapple with unique contextual challenges of having settled on speculated land for generations, with limited power over its use, due to lack of land tenure security. This lack of tenure security poses an additional challenge for municipal and national governments in providing basic services (Gulyani et al., 2018). In particular, safe and affordable access to water for slum residents remains unmet, as informal settlements often lack municipal water supply coverage and rely on small-scale informal water services (Garrick et al., 2019; WHO, 2019). It is argued that informal settlement residents’ perceptions of land tenure security also influence their housing investment behaviors, where only a small percentage of them are able to invest and own houses (Gulyani et al., 2018; Nakamura, 2016; Van Gelder, 2010). Furthermore, lack of home ownership titles hinders the capacity of tenants to invest in permanent water, sanitation, and electricity connections due to fear of evictions (De Soto, 1989; Payne, 2002; Satterthwaite, 2005). In addition, climate change and rapid urbanization compound these challenges by placing additional burdens on affordability and accessibility of water for slum dwellers, especially the tenants in these settlements.This dissertation is an investigation into the linkages between informal urbanization and household water security. In doing so, I conducted research in three settlements in the city of Nairobi through the years 2018-2022. My investigation in the settlements of Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Kwa Reuben, and Viwandani began in the summer of 2018 and summer of 2019, and continued in 2020 during a global pandemic, and during the years 2021 and 2022, when there were several evictions and demolitions in the settlements, in addition to an ongoing pandemic. The dissertation took a mixed-methods approach, and two modalities - in-person and remote (over phone) using semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, stakeholder workshops, and phone surveys. The first component of the dissertation examines the relationships between housing tenure (tenancy vs. homeownership), access to water service types (formal vs. informal; tap-points vs. tanker trucks), and household water insecurity levels. I identified a strong relationship between tenancy and water insecurity levels, and household access to formal vs. informal water services. These findings have important implications for development interventions that singularly focus on water infrastructures, whereas I show the importance of addressing housing tenure injustice in slums to alleviate water insecurity and access. The second study investigated the relationships between pandemic related lockdown induced employment and business disruptions, water affordability and accessibility, and hygiene practices such as hand washing among households. I found that the study sites which already struggled with water accessibility, lockdown-era employment and business disruptions were associated with additional water-related hardships, and lower hygiene levels. In the final study, I investigated the movement of the study sample after eviction and demolition events during 2021 and early 2022. I found that, of the households who were evicted for redevelopment purposes, a majority of them came back and resettled in the same settlements from which they were evicted, or a minority of them moved to nearby informal areas. I show that urban renewal projects that evict informal settlement households lead to increasing the population density of the existing informal areas. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on larger development challenges of rapid urbanization, water security, and exacerbating inequality in the city of Nairobi.