Kenya: New Law Proposes 3-Month Eviction Notice, Consent for Rent Review
Nairobi — Landlords may soon be barred from evicting tenants from their premises without a 90-day notice and an authorization from a rent tribunal.
The proposal is contained in the Landlord and Tenant Bill 2021 before the Senate.
Senators led by Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen and his Narok Counterpart Ledama Ole Kina said the Bill is timely as it also seeks to restrict landlords from increasing rent without a 3-month notice to the tenants.
“You cannot just evict a Kenyan living in your property without a consent by tribunal in the event that tenant has not paid rent for let’s say a month and if the eviction is not carried out within a stipulated time then it lapse and that person continues living in that house. These are some of the issues that both the tenants and lands must be alive to,” Kina said.
Murkomen said: “The notice gives you enough time to say you can no longer live in this premise and you move to another. So, a landlord cannot just wake up one day and say the rent has moved from 5,000 to 10,000 you must give the necessary notice and according to the law.”
The Bill however indicates that a tenant who does not oppose increase of rent after receiving notice of an intended increase within 30 days of the notice, will be deemed to have accepted the rent increase.
Nandi Senator Samsom Cherargei stated that if the Bill is expeditiously implemented, it will also protect people whose premises and properties are illegally demolished on claims of sitting on grabbed public land, as the government or the county government will require to issue a 120-day notice to the owners.
“The biggest menace in this country especially in this city is what we call infrastructural evictees where either they want to demolish the premises or residential house because they want to expand the roads but the manner in which they do it is unfair and without the due regard of the law,” said Cherargei.
The Landlord and Tenant Bill 2021 is sponsored by National Assembly Majority Leader Amos Kimunya and seeks to consolidate all the laws on residential and commercial tenancies to ensure regulation of the rental sector in Kenya.
In the Bill, the landlord is also barred from subjecting a tenant to any form of annoyance with the intention of encouraging or convincing the tenant to vacate the premises or to pay directly or indirectly a higher rent for the premises.
Any landlord or agent found guilty of committing the offence is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding two months’ rent of the premises or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or both.
The Bill however points out that a landlord will be entitled to terminate tenancy for any reason without reference to the rent tribunal upon the landlord giving notice of not less than 24 months in case of business premises and not less than 12 in case of a residential premises.
By Capital FM.
