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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