By IMMACULATE WAIRIMU immawairimu@yahoo.com
Posted Thursday, August 1 2013 at 01:00
Posted Thursday, August 1 2013 at 01:00
In Summary
- Devolved crime, devalued houses: Growing insecurity in the suburbs has resulted in a slow exodus farther afield or around areas deemed safe, such as those near police stations, chiefs’ camps, major roads or major establishments like hospitals, schools and malls. In effect, this trend is slowly devaluing areas deemed crime-prone or poorly policed, leaving landlords with houses no one wants. For a market that is demand-driven and heavily loan-financed, this is news as bad as it can get
On May 19 this year, police officers laid a
siege on a house in the sprawling, unplanned neighbourhood of Kimbo in
Githurai, Nairobi.
Their target was a man named Felix Nyangaga Ouko, whom they believed had been drawn into the murky world of terrorism and was using this busy area as his hideout.
Their informers and subsequent investigations had led them to believe that Ouko was behind the 2011 terror attack at Mwaura’s Pub off Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi, and that he was an accomplice of Elgiva Bwire, a convicted Al-Shabaab member serving a life term in prison after pleading guilty to terror charges.
As the crowd milled around the block of flats where Ouko lived, their eyes trained on the room where police said Ouko and his wife were using their infant daughter as a human shield, neighbours followed the drama in disbelief, unable to comprehend how this man, how this couple they had known for months, had managed to hide their true identity and intentions for that long.
Ouko rarely communicated with his cellphone and, because of that, had managed to escape a police dragnet for almost two years despite being one of Kenya’s most wanted men. Neighbours said he and his wife led a very quiet, private life.
“We never saw them during the day for the period they lived here,” Stephen Mochanda said, “although that is normally the nature of people in Nairobi. Their situation was, however, rather exceptional. You couldn’t see them even during weekends.”
And therein lies the problem. Mochanda and his neighbours were rubbing shoulders every day with a man who could bring down a building, or maim dozens, in a flash. They wondered quietly why the man was never at home during the day, even on weekends, but thought probably he was just the busy Nairobi type that never rests.
By the time the police smoked out the couple with tear gas and shot both husband and wife dead after a dramatic stake-out, the whole neighbourhood had gathered to watch two of their own meet their explosive ends.
But why Kimbo? Or Githurai? Why the densely populated areas of Pangani, Zimmermann, Kayole and the like?
“Rogue tenants have discovered that high-traffic residential properties afford more privacy as opposed to secure, low-traffic areas,” explains Thinwa Kagai, the Property Director at Villa Care Limited. Here, there is little attention from nosy neighbours and the cover of the masses makes it the ideal hideout for those with ulterior motives.
Insulating the public
It is no surprise, then, that serious crime is
slowly devolving to the suburbs, where armed robberies, carjackings,
terror plots and such have become the order of the day. As a result,
property experts are calling for concerted efforts by both the
government and community policing groups to devise ways of insulating
the public from the pain and loss of crime. Developers, especially, are
on the radar of security experts, who accuse them of failure to do due
diligence when letting out their houses.
“Developers are quick to close sales without doing background checks on tenants moving in,” says Kagai. “As a result, criminals have cashed in on this laxity and turned residential places into hideouts. Tenants who are criminal in nature will engage in all forms of crimes if allowed the space, including turning the properties into narcotics outlets, criminal harbours, and even depository centres.”
The growing insecurity in the suburbs has resulted in a slow exodus farther afield or around areas deemed safe, such as those near police stations, chief’s camps, major roads or major establishments like hospitals, schools and malls.
“Developers are exhausting their fortunes to bring up developments yet the danger of rendering their investments uninhabitable is becoming very real as crime mutates to the suburbs,” says Daniel Ojijo, the Chief Executive Officer, Mentor Holdings Limited.
Wake-up call
Ojijo is rooting for the involvement of
experienced professional property management firms in the letting
process, which would guarantee developers security of their developments
and their tenants.
The Githurai incident served as a wake-up call to both landlords and tenants. When the police eventually gained entry into the gunned-down couple’s house, they were visibly shocked by what they found inside.
They knew the man was dangerous, but not this much. A rich supply of grenades, the latest fad in the criminal underworld, was found hidden inside the house, as was an assortment of other deadly weapons.
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