Ruto’s government collects Sh73.2 billion in housing tax; delivers only 3 projects

President William Ruto’s government collected Sh73.2 billion from the controversial affordable housing tax in the financial year ended June 2025. In the same period, the government delivered only 3 housing projects.

These housing projects under the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) comprised of some 1,795 finished units, some of which were started during the previous administration. The three projects were in Mukuru area in Nairobi, Bondeni in Nakuru, and Homa Bay.

The Mukuru project has 1,080 units, while the Nakuru and Homa Bay projects are made up of 605 and 110 units respectively. These units are huge shortfall from the alleged 200,000 units that President Ruto claimed would be built every year under the controversial tax program.

During the period, the number of Kenyans who have registered on the Boma Yangu portal for potential home ownership stood at 293,326 against the target of 565,800. This data is contained in the report by the Affordable Housing Board titled Sector Budget Proposal Report for FY 2026/27 which was submitted to the National Treasury.

Earlier this month, the Principal Secretary at the State Department for Housing and Urban Development Charles Hinga, said that the government has only managed to complete 3,171 housing units since the tax was founded.

“40,000 more housing units are at advanced stages and 161,911 housing units in total are ongoing,” Hinga claimed. “The government envisages to build 200,000 units every year to bridge the gap on housing.” He then went on to claim that another 700,000 were in various stages of planning.

This admission came amidst concerns on whether these 3,171 were actually initiated by the current administration under the programme or whether they were launched by the previous administration.

At the same time, Hinga’s latest numbers come barely four months after he claimed that the government could not achieve the target of 200,000 housing units per year without borrowing additional funds.

This was despite the government parking billions of unused funds that have been collected through the controversial housing tax in treasury bills.

“We are targeting 200,000 units per year. If you use a conservative estimate of Sh2 million per unit, that is about Sh400 billion annually. The housing tax brings in at most Sh72 billion, so we must leverage that,” Hinga had said in June. “We are partnering with investors to bring in private capital and use the levy as an off-take guarantee.”

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