Friday, 31 July 2015

Private sector driven housing delivery and the many question by Olusegun Ariyo


                                                                                

        
The performance of the housing sector is often a barometer for measuring the health or ill health of a nation. Therefore, for any nation, housing is a set of durable assets which account for higher proportion of a community’s wealth and on which house hold spend a substantial part of their income any analysis of housing problems, including those being encountered by different players in the sector. Therefore, is a study of a nation’s attempt to adapt its inheritance to new need and to add to this inheritance in ways that accord with a changing economic and social structure and rising human aspiration? Since the housing problem has an ever changing nature of dynamic proportions which neither lend itself to static appraisal nor a belief in a once and for all solution.




 Consequently, housing has become a political football and has thus suffered from poorly articulated problems, short lived policy formulation process, ill conceived legislation and incongruous and sustainable programme objectives thus, confusing maze of public housing programmers, tandem mortgage financial plans, undefined and largely unsustainable housing subsidy system have been the product of over threes of inconsistencies policies in the housing sector in Nigeria.



 A discussion on housing delivery system would be incomplete without determining the supply aspect. After all, the housing system consists of owners and managers of the existing dwelling and the way they behave, the dwelling them selves with all the bundle of service and satisfaction they define, the new homes and apartment and the industry that produces them. When a housing shortage occurs most people view it as a problem on the supply side of the market. They see too few dwellings, not too many people.



 At the local level, a blighted area appears to most people with exaggerated preferences who demand too much housing or set standard for decent housing. In most of the discussions for housing efficiency, nobody ever talks about roll back in demand but the discussion is usually on how to improve the production and delivery system.




 People tend to expect better housing rather than force them selves to reduce expectation and accept less. Unfortunately, the housing industry is perhaps the most conservative, less dynamic and very allergic to innovation, especially when compared with most other major industries. Indeed, it is one of the industries which conspicuously require stimulation through judicious public policies. The various strategies of the NHP over the past decade were expected to have become fruitful, resulting in a significant reduction in quantitative housing shortage and to have brought about vast improvement running down housing units and environment to bring on board those housing units falling off the stock in the housing market. Apparently, those strategies have had no known impact on the housing need of Nigerians especially that of the poor. The increasing number of mortgage financial outfit, structural reorganization of the existing housing institution and several other laudable effort of government to solve housing problem in the country have not yielded the requisite dividend. Unfortunately, this has been the track record housing in Nigeria, especially in the public realm, in the three last decade and more. For example, the various federal governments’ direct delivery programme achieved very little in numerical terms to meet the construction target set.



 Report indicate that When the  stock was taken, of  the 202,00 housing unit earmarked for production in the third national development plan, less than 15% of the houses were completed. Further more, during the second civilian administration, a total of 40,000 were indicated as plan to be constructed annually nation wide but the overall achievement was said to have been put at 20%. The national housing tended to graciously follow the set targets of the united nation of “housing for all by year 2000’’. It noted that to achieve this target Nigeria must produce some 700,000 housing units per annum.




 The ultimate goal of the policy was to ensure that all Nigerians own or have access to decent housing accommodation at affordable cost by the year 2000. The magic year 2000 has come and gone into several years in arrears and most Nigerians are badly housed as they were before the setting of the target in 1990. Many Nigerian are still poorly housed, live in squalor environment and have increasingly become hopeless about owning their own houses. Their is no gainsaying the fact that rental housing sector has been and will continue to be major provider of the bulk of housing for the low income house holds. But who will provide these rental units in sufficient quantity to mop up the large unmet demand of these categories of Nigerians? Another erroneous impression of the government and private sector investors is that the poor cannot pay. Report have shown that very high level  of performance of low income groups when they are provided with substantially affordable housing.




 Further more, evidence abound where low-income  groups  have adopted various strategies to construct their housing units but are these indications enough to convince private developers,  to invest in the  housing of low-income population? Currently,  hope is place on the implementation of the recently submitted report of the constituted panel and the assumed beneficial of the newly created ministry of housing and urban development. If the past be prologue, however, this optimism should be tempered  with caution as the ministry and its policies must be complimented, supplemented and invigorated by the activity of the private sector.

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