Hospital Ward MCA Mwangi Wamwangi has said that the county government of Kiambu needs to come up with a low-income housing project in order to satisfy the rising demand for housing in Thika town.
Speaking in his Thika office on Tuesday, Wamwangi noted that the population of the town was fast rising leading to a high demand for housing and consequently the cost of housing going up too.
This, he said, if not well checked could lead to a rise of more informal settlements as residents seek for more affordable housing.
"In Thika we have Gachagi and Kiandutu slums which with time we would expect to be there no more. But this can turn to be the exact opposite if the county government doesn't not chip in and provide affordable housing," said Wamwangi.
He added: "The increasing demand for housing has led to landlords increasing their rents and it will reach a point that many people won't afford these high rents and end up in slums where houses are cheap and slums in this town will continue to expand."
The MCA said that the current existing county houses cannot meet the rising demand for low-income housing seeing that they had been designed in the early 1970s to cater for the then much lower population. The county government is said to have plans to modernise its houses in Jamhuri, Ofafa, Starehe among other estates in order to benefit more people.
However, the move has been met with resistance by the current occupants who see the move as a plan by the county government to evict them from the houses they have lived in for decades.