Feb 4, UN Housing Expert Jobs in Kenya

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

UN-Habitat supports the urban poor by contributing to the transformation of cities into safer, healthier, greener places with better opportunities where everyone can live with dignity. As part of its mandate, the UN-Habitat implements various normative interventions for sustainable urbanization in Kenya.

Kenya’s national annual demand for urban housing is 250,000 units, yet the formal sector only provides 50,000 units resulting in an annual housing deficit of 200,000 units, and in the absence of new major streams of housing supply, it is estimated to increase to 8 million in less than a decade.

The increased demand for dwelling places due to rapid urbanisation at 4.3 % p.a., is mainly driven by rural-urban migration, deepening the housing crisis in urban areas. The Government of Kenya estimates that the investment requirements to meet housing demand over 20 years is up to USD 90 billion.

Outside of the formal sector supply of urban housing, the informal sector and individual homeowners generate the bulk of housing units, many funded through cooperatives which are immensely successful in Kenya, owning vast parcels of land and a huge asset base pooled from over 14 million members’ contributions.

Currently, there are 1,980 housing cooperatives with an asset base of KES 21 billion. The Kenya Vision 2030 blue-print projects that cooperative movements have the capacity to contribute 25% of the housing stock in urban areas within the country. This well established cooperative landscape is not fully utilised to facilitate private public partnerships and finance solutions for affordable homeowner-led housing and for the improvement of small-medium suppliers.

The European Union (EU) Delegation in Kenya promoting EU values and interests, focusing on peace, people, prosperity, the planet and partnership is funding the joint programme, Partnership Implementing the New Urban Agenda – PINUA, in housing designed and to be delivered by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the Government of Kenya (GoK).

PINUA is designed to address housing supply gaps, through a roadmap for learning, finetuning and piloting that will allow GoK to access success and scale-up. It envisions a sustainable well-executed Participatory Slum-upgrading Programme (PSUP) building on over success and experience of 12 years of UN Habitat’s work funded by European Commission in 40 ACP countries and 200 cities that has facilitated increased access to basic services, security of tenure and empowerment of informal settlement dwellers through the Community Managed funds to improve livelihoods.

In Kenya, the PSUP has been implemented as a pilot in two informal settlements in Mtwapa township, Kilifi county resulting in security of tenure for more than 12,000 households through land regularisation and neighbourhood spatial planning. The plans in place for the slum upgrading have not been executed to full lifecycle of community benefit in most instances due to the lack of resourcing.

Limited approaches to blended financing that will support the homeowner-led incremental housing and related green supply chains will be a key area in which PINUA will pilot a socially and economically viable, government endorsed Kenyan model.

There are interesting models in Sri Lanka such as the 22,000 EU-funded houses built with UN-Habitat and Habitat for Humanity and 30 million units under India’s PMAY from 2018-2023 with individual blended grants and loans totaling USD 2400 per household that demonstrate results, however, there is limited attempts to strategically study possible

replication approaches as suitable for Kenya.

PINUA project seeks to achieve the following outcomes:

Improved enabling environment for Housing Co-production from the Public Sector

Communities are more resilient and proactive eco co-producers

PINUA’s Overall objective is inclusive, green and resilient urbanisation in Kenya while the Strategic objective is upscaling of adequate housing and communities’ eco-co-production unlocked.

This position is located within the Regional Office for Africa under the Kenya Country Programme.

The goal of this assignment is to validate the project design and align the Theory of Change, implementation strategies, and risk assessment and mitigation. To achieve the above-mentioned goal, the assignment includes the following specific objectives.

Develop the overall delivery strategy for the project looking in the financing model, housing typology, institutional structure and appropriate governance

Revise the guiding TOC for implementation management, monitoring and evaluation.

Identify/justify the most appropriate sites for implementation.

Conduct a detailed stakeholder’s analysis.

Update logframe and prepare a work plan.

Update the Risk Assessment and mitigation strategy.

Responsibilities:

Under the direct supervision of the Head of Kenya Programme, the consultant will be responsible for the following tasks but not limited to.

Undertake a critical analysis, map and identify appropriate approaches.

Validate project activities on the ground with the relevant partners and stakeholders and in some instances with local communities and beneficiaries.

Analysis the cooperative system and other mechanisms for financing housing and the articulation with the PINUA.

Conduct a stakeholder’s analysis, identify project beneficiaries, possible partners and stakeholders more clearly and establish synergies with other on-going and planned activities.

Verify sites of pilot interventions, scope them in detail and define implementation modalities in consultation with relevant stakeholders.

Analysis the sector of building material ( green and affordability )

Analysis the articulation between the PINUA and existing housing policies and frameworks (including the housing bill and the KISIP II program)

Conduct a risk analysis of the action based on the realities on the ground and propose contextually relevant mitigation measures.

Identify tools, channels and best practices to tackle affordable housing issues that can be used to enhance the project strategies and approaches.

Provide a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the action, focusing on affordable housing issues to inform the operationalization of the project

Qualifications/special skills

Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in Housing, architecture, civil engineering, urban and regional planning, economics or physical sciences relevant to development and management of human settlements or a related field is required. A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

A minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience in human settlements, project or programme management or related field is required

At least two years working experience in housing or urban planning or slum upgrading within Africa is highly desirable

Proven experience in human settlements development fields, projects/programme design and implementation with the UN or other international agencies is also desirable.

Languages

For the position advertised, fluency in oral and written English is required.

How to Apply

For more information and job application details, see; UN Housing Expert Jobs in Kenya

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