Ethiopia: Housing Agency to Evict Illegal Tenants

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Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)

5 August 2008
Posted to the web 5 August 2008

Wudineh Zenebe

The Agency for Government Houses (AGH) will evict 5,000 illegal tenants who have failed to settle their accumulated rental bills from its houses. On August 1, 2008, the agency finalized the preparations of a strategy that enables it to take forceful measures against illegal occupants, and those who fail to pay their rent.

Following an instruction given by Kasu Yilala (PhD), minister of Works and Urban Development (MoWUD) two weeks ago, experts of the agency prepared and submitted an execution plan to Kasu.

"The Agency will distribute final warnings to its tenants who have built illegal extensions as of this week," a source at the Agency told Fortune.

The Agency was restructured into its current form in December 2007. The previous Rented Houses Agency (RHA) was combating 1,006 court cases that range between three to 20 years old. It also could not collect the over 120 million Br accumulated rental debts from tenants. The MoWUD restructured the RHA into the AGH. The ministry embarked on a study of 364 sample houses under its administration to try to identify the problems of the former agency.

Following the study, the Agency found that 87pc of the tenants had built illegal extensions. From the approximately 16,000 houses the Agency manages, 7,000 of them have serious problems, the study revealed.

The agency is also battling the problem of the illegal transfer of properties. In some cases, tenants occupy a house under the pretense of becoming a resident, and turn the house into a bar, hotel, or even a vegetable grocer. Evicting such tenants often involves lengthy and complicated litigation.

In a bid to end this problem, the MoWUD presented a bill to the Council of Ministers, which approved it before it became a law in Parliament. The reform enables the current agency to take measures against tenants that it considers are illegal, without having to go to court.

Eight months after the reform, the agency is now set to taking measures.

"If the illegal tenants do not abide by the instruction this week, they will be evicted," an official of the Agency, told Fortune.

The RHA was established a year after a proclamation that confiscated urban land and extra houses was declared in 1975 during the military regime. It was given the mandate to takeover and rent houses for 100 Br a month.

The Agency now collects rental payments, and refurbishes and privatizes houses, grossing approximately 50 million Br in annual profit. It has remained as an autonomous organ, despite tenants' complaints with the services it renders.

Up to 1991, the Agency had invested 524.5 million Br on the construction and repair of houses, and had 25,374 houses and 25 hotels under its supervision until 1993. However, the Agency lost 5772 houses following the decision passed by the Council of Ministers to transfer houses located in regional states to the tenants, except those in Addis Abeba and Dire Dawa.

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