The number of residential housing units completed by the government fell by half to 1,655 units in 2024 from 3,357 houses in the year before, new data shows.
Official data from the 2025 Economic Survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows that the value of these houses subsequently fell to Sh4 billion from 11 billion.
“The value of public residential building works completed by the State Department for Housing and Urban Development (SDHUD) declined from Sh11 billion in 2023 to Sh4 billion in 2024,” added the Economic Survey.
Other houses were subcategorised as those constructed by the National Housing Corporation (NHC). In the review period, there was no house built by the NHC compared to 164 units the year before.
The Economic Survey shows that since 2020, there were 9,667 residential units completed by both NHC and the State department. These houses were valued at a cumulative 27.2 billion in the period under review.
Most of these houses were completed in 2023 by both the government agency and the department of housing which completed 3,521 houses valued at Sh11.7 billion.
The state department of housing and urban development is tasked with developing housing policies, overseeing building standards, facilitating slum upgrading and managing affordable housing projects.
The affordable housing programme, one of President William Ruto's flagship projects, seeks to plug the housing deficit in the country which stands at 200,000 houses annually.
Under the affordable housing programme, the government intends to make serviced land available to private developers through a public-private partnership (PPP) to support large-scale delivery of affordable homes, according to a paper by the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis.
But there are also fears that the government faces an uphill task in meeting its target of putting up 250,000 houses annually.
The government is also expected to provide infrastructure such as water, sewerage, access roads and electricity to attract the private sector.
The construction sector contracted by 0.7 percent in 2024 compared to 3 percent growth in 2023.
“The contraction was reflected in the decline of key inputs such as cement and iron and steel imports in the construction sector,” said KNBS.
Cement consumption declined from 9.2 million tonnes in 2023 to 8.54 million tonnes in 2024. Similarly, the volume of imported iron and steel decreased by 8.9 percent to stand at 1.1 million tonnes in 2024.
