Housing in Malawi is for privileged few

Finally 2016 is upon us. I would like to take this opportunity to wish followers and readers of this column and everyone a happy and prosperous new year. May all your wishes and plans you have set to achieve in this year come to fruition. As for those plans that you set out in 2015 and somehow you failed to achieve, I want to say that there is still time to do so. As long as you have life you still have a chance to realise your dreams.

One of my dreams which I have not set a deadline for yet, is to one day stay in my own house unlike the current situation of renting out. And talking of renting out houses, in the many years that I have been renting, I have discovered that landlords/landladies are becoming ridiculously obnoxious each passing day.

Many of us might have had an experience where the landlord wakes up one day and decides to evict you. Forget that you had signed a contract that either of you should give each other a specified time if you are to leave the house or if the landlord decides to chuck you of the house. They simply throw that off the window because most landlords just don’t honour the contract. They justify that it is their house and can do what pleases them with it. Not to mention landlords who will barge in the house you are renting just to check whether you are taking good care of the house. I hope we are not taking these nauseating habits into 2016.

There are so many ridiculous things that landlords do. I am reminded of yet another by lawyer Sunduzwayo Madise who recently argued on his Facebook wall about how landlords in this country are subjecting their tenants to a life of misery.

Madise wrote about how landlords demand that people pay rent three to six months in advance and how very few landlords accept monthly payments. Taking into consideration that most tenants are barely making ends meet, Madise argued that this demand is what makes most tenants struggle to pay rentals. I liked the part where Madise is proposing that perhaps there is a need to change the law to stop what he calls “draconian practice of subjecting Malawians to untold misery.”

I totally agree with Madise on his arguments as well as well suggestion to change the laws.

I have always wondered what criteria landlords determine rental value for their houses. Take for example a house that was built by Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) by now is in private hands after it was sold. The new owner has not done any renovations or alterations to the house by charges probably four times the amount that MHC would charge say for a two bed-roomed house.

And then there is this trend of increasing rentals just because we are in a new year. I am no property evaluator but I just feel that somehow we are being duped by landlords. I wish government could fulfill its mandate of protecting its citizens by intervening in this despicable injustice. n