Influence and Invisibility: Tenants in Housing Provision in Mwanza City, Tanzania

Neo-liberal perspectives of development planning, promoted through the 1996 Habitat Agenda and the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) approach, are becoming evident in the national policies of various low-income nations, including Tanzania. This country’s urban planning approach reflects the wider international and neo-liberal housing policy discourse, which emphasizes the role of community participation and residents’ security of tenure in driving slum-upgrading processes.

This book draws attention to the neglect of rental tenure within Tanzania’s housing policy. The author collected empirical data from three settlements in Mwanza (one of Tanzania’s largest cities), during five field visits between 2002 and 2005. Here, as in many other cities in Africa, a high proportion of residents are tenants in rented private housing. The neglect of rental housing means that the implementation of Tanzania’s housing and urban planning policy occurs without the participation of a large proportion of inhabitants, i.e. tenants.

Housing careers, housing strategies, rental tenure and the Sustainable Communities Programme are among the key themes examined. This book has three aims. The first is to examine the housing practices of residents in Mwanza with a focus on rental tenure. The second is to analyze some of the factors behind the neglect of rental tenure and the agency of tenancy in Tanzania’s housing and urban planning discourse. The third aim is to analyze the implementation process of the national policy at the local level in Mwanza and to find out what discrepancies exist between policy and practice.

Chapter 1 introduces the research, its aims and its theoretical and analytical context. Chapter 2 gives a background to Mwanza and the housing situation in the three case study settlements of Mabatini, Kawekami and Kiloleli, and highlights the importance of private rental tenure. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the housing practices of residents in the case study areas. Chapter 3 identifies the characteristics of rental tenure and looks specifically at tenants’ perceptions related to paying rent in Mwanza and how it affects their lives. The chapter also examines the socioeconomic conditions that lead to rental tenure, and the relationships between landlords and their tenants. Chapter 4 discusses the theory behind rental careers and strategies, and the role of rental tenure within these. It also discusses the type of resources used in housing strategies and their restrictions. Through the testimonies of five tenants, the chapter concludes that housing careers and strategies are affected by different variables and structural constraints such as labour markets or gender structures.

Chapter 5 looks at the international and national policy levels in relation to urban planning approaches. It illustrates how international processes, such as the Sustainable Cities Programme in the 1990s, influenced Tanzanian national policies and encouraged the privatization of public services. It links the process of privatization to the diminution of public rental tenure and the promotion of private rental tenure through less strict legislation, which tended to benefit house owners and not tenants. Chapter 6 discusses the complex governance processes related to Mwanza’s housing situation. By drawing on official documents and plans, discussions and interviews with town planners, the Mwanza director, ward executives and others, it shows how local actions follow national official policy, with tenure seen as a private issue that the government does not interfere with.

Chapter 7 examines why tenants do not work collectively to make their needs and priorities more visible to government. It questions whether tenants see the lack of attention given to rental tenure in the national housing policy as a problem. This highlights how tenants have lived so long in informal rented housing that they have no expectations that the government will ameliorate the