Evaluating the Compliance of University Towns to the Housing Standards, Kabianga University, Kenya

The growth of informal settlement within university towns in Kenya is alarming and needs more attention. Sustainable development being a major component of urban planning calls on planners to view informal settlements as an aspect of urban development. This study assessed the compliance of housing standards within university towns in Kenya, a case of Kabianga University town. The study was only limited to the housing standards as one of the causes to proliferation of informal settlement, where 24 standards were assessed within the university town. The study targeted 3636 households in the area and 50 student hostels. Mixed sampling techniques were applied to obtain the sample, which included purposeful, cluster and simple random sampling. A total of 35 respondents were used, comprising of 15 households, 15 hostels and 5 key resource people in the area. Primary data was used, which was collected from interview schedules and observation checklists. Data was analysed statistically with the help of SPSS. The study findings revealed that Kabianga University town had full compliance to housing standards at a rate of 33.042 %, 57.713 % did not meet the minimum standards and 7.936 % partially met the required standards.