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Rental Wars: How The Local Rental Chain is Crying for Mercy on Both Sides

Writer's picture: Second Class CitizensSecond Class Citizens
Sep 23, 20208 min read

Updated: Sep 27, 2020

Before We Begin: My Humble COVID rant


We can all genuinely agree that COVID-19 has brought out a mixed bag of fortunes and misfortunes to the world and the various country economies. From watching the world stock market crumble down, key global service sectors like aviation literally grind to a halt, people losing their jobs and nearly 1M deaths from the virus and I honestly don’t know how worse it could get. From kids and generally most students in the world switching from in-class to online learning to children who’ve no access to education, definitely this pandemic is doing the most of making life difficult for all of us. And did I mention mental health and gender-based violence issues? The list can definitely go on and on.



Now Let’s Begin: Breaking Down the Real Estate Statistics.


However today, we look at a key sector which has seen its rise, fall and uncertain rise again during the whole pandemic, which is the real estate sector. According to the first ever research done by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) it was estimated that 70% of homes in the urban areas were all rental dwellings, with 86.4% of homes in Nairobi been rental dwellings. That roughly accounts for almost 9/10 houses in the Kenyan capital.


These facts can loosely translate to the point that majority of the residents who live in Nairobi are kept to the task of paying a monthly fee which is in form of rent to their respective landlords, whom of which, 73% of them collect the rent directly from the tenants while another 19.6% of them use agents to collect the rent, through use of bureaucratic systems of payment which is meant to ease relationships between the landlords and the tenants.


This Rental policy has been in existence for decades and is as well practiced in the global real estate sector, however, with COVID setting in, the sector has been completely faced with unprecedented uncertainty of how it will turn out on both sides.


As of May 2020, 61% of Kenyan citizens were unable to raise money to pay for their rent and the number is expected to rise as a result of economic hardships which have resulted to them loosing their jobs, or having salary cuts which has in turn affected their economic power of paying for the rent.


Drastic Events Call for Drastic Measures

(C) Wanderlust.co.uk


With the majority of the Kenyan citizens unable to pay for their rents, and majority of them residing in Nairobi, it called for various tenants to take various actions which involved making desperate escapes out of the capital to their rural areas in a bid to escape the frantic hunts being performed by their respective landlords. Some cases further saw tenants literally abandoning their homes and belongings at the mercy of the landlords in a bid to start a new life, while others would lock themselves in their homes as a way to disguise their absence so as to trick the rent collectors.


Landlords on the other hand, known to be a bunch of on-time people who wait for the end month to go and collect their dues from the people who reside in their homes, were also faced with a dilemma of either sacrificing human rights over profits or vice versa. This was a trend that was seen carried on for the first three months, where landlords gave discounts or even free rent to their tenants as a means to give them time to cope with their individual needs in the midst of the pandemic.


However as time proceeded on, and when the fourth, fifth and now sixth month began to trickle in with the sign of no end to the pandemic, landlords and their fellow counterparts continued to grow desperate as a result of no income trickling into their accounts, and as a result, their usual hunting began, which mainly involved forcefully evicting tenants who are unable to pay and opening their homes to other people who would be able to pay and live there, since it’s believed that those who previously lived in relatively higher costing houses, are now undergoing austerity measures which includes adjusting to a lower paying house.


The evictions have been widely criticized by fellow citizens and government officials, as the government requested landlords to be more “flexible” with their tenants and to avoid removing them from their homes and also demanding full payment of rent. Furthermore, citizens continuously took to social media to give best case scenarios of other countries where governments are taking the lead to cater for the rental fees of their citizens affected by the pandemic. Social media posts, mainly consisting of netizens boycotting to pay the rent and continuously advocating to others to pursue “tenants rights” have continuously been on the rise as the situation turns to be more desperate for both the tenants and the landlords.


It was also noted that landlords and house providers began denying essential services to the tenants, such as water, electricity and also in some cases, physically confiscating parts of the house such as doors and also roofs to attempt to pressure them into paying their demanded rent. Some of these actions displaying the level of desperation that these landlords have in order to gather what they can.


As a result of these actions taken, several tenants further resorted to seeking protection from their local county administration as well as the national government, to be given more time to consolidate whatever they could, a move which proved futile, while others have instead chose to move in together as smaller communities or groups, and cost share the rent, food as well as bills in a bid to cut costs as the situation continues to worse. Others were forced to move into the streets and suffer in the cold as a result of the failure to raise money to pay for their homes. All these actions displaying the level of frustration and desperation as well as hopelessness amongst the people.


Understanding the Frantic Evictions by Landlords


To understand where landlord-tenant conflict is at, we indeed know the source of the problem, which is obviously the tenant and the landlord as most of these incidents of evictions are often caused as a result of a tenant not following up with the agreements made before they moved into the house.


For a fact, it’s understood that the main source of income of persons who own rental establishments is rent money paid. And often this rent money often paid by the tenants is used for other services such as paying land rates for the local authority, rental tax as well as utility services such as water and electricity. Therefore from the most basic point of analysis, when the tenants are not able to pay their rent, it equally means that the owner is not able to provide them the services that are offered in the complex, which in turn results to the tenants having issues such as no access to electricity, and other utility services, which in turn results to increased tension between both parties as it is perceived that the denial of service is often done deliberately by the landlords.


Most of these landlords as well are servicing their loans which they acquired from their banks and through the earnings they get, they’re able to repay to the bank in order to avoid incurring other charges as well as interest. This key issue was brought out by the government as they claimed that the reason they could not further intervene in the ‘rent wars’ is because most of these businesses are privately-owned and that many of the landlords depend on the rent money for their living. Therefore, as they seek to recuperate what they can from the properties they own, it’s resulted them to now flipping the switch and instead taking drastic measures to ensure that they can at least be able to gain revenue. Through locking tenants’ belongings, to scrapping the roof (literally) of their homes, landlords began to take more bizarre measures to coerce tenants to give them their money. These moves, easily prompting tenants to vacate from their city homes to the countryside in a bid to “start a new life” while others desperately moving to other cheaper homes to try and salvage what they can in their economic hardships. Often the point of view coming out from these landlords is that they are in an as equal struggle as they are, and that they are all trying to survive and that if they can’t understand that, they can as well leave.


As a result of these rising “impunity of landlords”, plans have been set out by a group of lobbyist landlords, which rallies for landlords to have the ability to gain access to the tenant’s employer information so as to actually verify if they have the ability to pay for their rent. Covered as a “welfare protection policy” by landlords, the move began to be seen popular with many landlords as a result of the rising trends of tenants increasingly lying of their ability to pay their rent. The move is claimed to build trust between the tenants and the landlords as this further enables the landlords to be able to adjust necessary reliefs for their tenants. However critics claim that this move could be one sided as landlords could deliberately hike rental fees or deny reliefs for their tenants as a result of having access to their financial statements from their employer.


Final Thoughts


Whether these solutions will have the ability to solve these underlying issues, only time will tell. It is safe to say that during the pandemic, everyone is struggling to survive, since we have a disease to stay safe from, as well as an economic hardship that’s slowly developing and taking a toll on us. The most probable yet realistic solution for all home owners and their tenants is to be able to agree on various policies and accept the fact that we’re in very tough times. Such that tenant can’t raise rent as swift as they used to, and that the landlord’s income is in a potential strain. Getting these two facts together will be the most helpful factor that will assist both parties to be able to sail through this tough time.


Issues such as tenant agreements could be brought up to justify evictions and confiscation of property of tenants, since these were agreements that were mutually accepted, and that unfortunately is the law of real estate, such that if you can’t pay for it then leave it. However this does not justify inhuman treatment of tenants living in these complexes, the same tenants who are human beings and have families that live in the same building.


Therefore, the only way to overcome this issue or at least control it, is through creation of understanding and dialogue between both parties, since this will not only build up the relationship, but also it’ll enable both parties to set clear guidelines and policies that can be followed upon so as to avoid further conflict and try to be as realistic as possible during these times. Through rent reliefs, flexible payment plans as well as amendments to tenant agreements which are adaptable to pressured situations, this ensures security of the tenant and the landlord. And we could genuinely agree that the real estate sector is one that requires logic, emotion as well as rationality when dealing with it, as one misjudgement, could cause a potential misfire that is difficult to recover from, some of this misfires, is definitely a food for thought.


Do you think Landlords should be given the same empathy as their clients?

And are these evictions justified?

Feel free to interact with us and give us your thoughts on this and our other stories,

Shukran!


 

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