Health, Housing And Inclusion

Joining the global action for the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the Single Mothers Association of Kenya (SMAK) brings the issues of people’s health, public housing and active public participation as vital aspects in combating gender-based violence.

SMAK is a community based organization that integrates disadvantaged youth – and particularly female youth – into society through education courses and life skills training with the goal of empowering them with the skills they need to be self-reliant SMAK shares that in 2016, women accounted for 910,000 of the 1.6 million people living with HIV in Kenya. As in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, women in Kenya face discrimination in terms of access to education, employment and healthcare. In many instances, housing also accounts to the many social services that remain inaccessible.

Healthy housing is defined as housing that is sited, designed, built, renovated, and maintained in ways that support the health of residents. In this light, SMAK cited that the condition of one’s housing contributes to health. For housing to be healthy and adequate, it means that it is affordable.

“Lack of security of tenure by itself is a mental health issue. Hidden homelessness makes one unable to make long-term plans,” said SMAK’s study about the correlation between housing and health. A focus on the housing impacts to people living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya has become the core of the study as Kenya, being amongst worst hit countries.

Some examples include the expansion of Pumwani Dispensary health facility which, although nobly intended, lacks of public participation in information dissemination, design, and inclusion of the needs of the community.

Another example is the gentrification and government-led developments of the Ghorofani, and Bondeni estates and Pumwani-Majengo settlers. For SMAK, the housing needs of the poor won’t be met by the on-going Affordable Housing Project (AHP) in these areas. Relocation and “moving to nowhere” also threaten to cut the social support system or the specialized health-care acquired by people with HIV/AIDS in nearby facilities.

In terms of pandemic mitigation and adaptation, the latest housing designs seen at Park Road ‘Boma Yangu’ Housing Project and that of Pangani Housing Estate renewal, are worse off than the former dwellings. City Hall is infamous for poor maintenance and management of its buildings vis-à-vis regulating real estate developers. If anything, the County government is notorious for commissioning shoddy jobs, if not allowing buildings on; wetlands, road reserves and other ‘open’ but not free spaces.

Equally incapacitated is Kenya’s Ministry of Health, according to SMAK. The scandals emerging from their Covid-19 response attested to the carelessness of the government to ensure the health and well-being of the people. For SMAK, these challenges became more and more apparent in time when the world also commemorated World Aids Day.

In these contexts and situations, the International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) echoes the demands of our Kenyan network SMAK. In reality, these aspirations resonate even to the calls of Indigenous Peoples, marginalized sectors and impoverished populations against gender-based violence and for housing services, people’s health and meaningful participation.

Some of these calls includes “active public participation, local knowledge in the grassroots informs national and international policies”, the adoption of “rights-based approach in development-induced displacement”, to work for “justice and equity in gender perspectives” and “to ensure provision of reliable power and water supply, making sanitation and hygiene needs achievable.”#

• Read SMAK and International Coalition of Sites of Conscience’s (ICSC) paper entitled “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. End inequalities. End AIDS. Correlation Between Housing and Health.“

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