More than a third of Kenyans were not able to pay their rent for the month of May according to a government survey.
The Survey on Socio Economic Impact of Covid-19 on Households Report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics revealed that 37 per cent of Kenyans were unable or would not be able to pay their May rent.
The survey which was carried out in June involving 14,616 respondents, showed that the virus has ravaged the economy, affecting Kenyans across the board.
According to the survey, almost 30.9 per cent of tenants who usually paid rent on the agreed date with their landlords before the pandemic were unable to pay on time for May.
The report shows that only 31.6 per cent of households paid rent on time for May.
The survey shows that 61 per cent of those who did not pay rent for May attributed it to the reduced income which affected different companies.
Also, 25.7 per cent said that they did not pay rent due to temporary layoffs from their places of works and closure of businesses.
About 8.1 per cent of the respondents said that they were not able to pay rent due to delayed income while 3.5 per cent could not pay rent following permanent layoffs and closure of businesses.
The survey also revealed that 0.7 per cent of households in rented dwellings had received waiver or relief from landlords on rent for May while six per cent had received a partial waiver.
The Survey which is being implemented in six waves utilises Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) approach.
The interviews are conducted through telephone and the responses are captured in Tablets and the data is then transmitted to a central server for data processing and data analysis.
The 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census data of individuals aged 18 years and above was used as the sampling frame for selection of a representative sample for each of the 47 counties.
During selection of individuals, the frame was stratified by county, sex and age and only one individual was sampled per household.
A questionnaire was administered to the selected respondents who provided both personal and household level information.
