Housing: FG’s new policy seeks affordable accommodation for majority, vulnerable

Though the Federal Government made some pronouncements representing its policies and programmes for housing delivery in the country in 2016, the most significant of those policies is the one that seeks to provide affordable accommodation for Nigerians who the government considers to be vulnerable and also in the majority of home seekers.

This new policy, which also represents government’s roadmap for housing, going forward, places emphasis on planning which, government believes, is key to successful execution requiring a clear understanding of who it wants to provide housing for.

“The first key to our roadmap in housing is planning and we must never get tired of explaining the necessity and importance of proper planning. It is the key to successful execution, it is the key to project completion, cost control and reduction in variation requests and financial calculations,” Babatunde Fashola, minister for power, works and housing, said at a forum in Abuja.

Over the years, Nigeria had embarked on a series of housing initiatives but not one of them had been pursued with consistency or any measurable sustainability, hence the need to change those unsustainable efforts to pave way for a sustainable and well thought out initiative.

The minister said government was convinced that it must lead the envisaged change and subsequently driven by the private sector, citing the public housing initiative of the United Kingdom, which was started by government in 1918 and, as of 2014, 64.8 percent of UK’s 53 million people were home owners.

In the new policy, though the focus is on the low-income earners and the most vulnerable, the government also recognises that there are people who want land to build for themselves, and also those who want town houses and duplexes, whether detached or semi-detached.

But this class of people, the minister explained, are not in the majority and so, they are not part of the target of the new plan because, “the people we must focus on are those in the majority and those who are most vulnerable”.

The new policy, according to the minister, requires government to standardize the size of doors, windows, toilets and bath fittings, lighting fittings and other accessories so that small and medium enterprises can respond to supplying all the building materials, creating diversification and jobs, and ensuring that projects are completed with a steady supply of materials”, he stated.

Similarly, the minister hopes to see a modification of the present approaches to mass housing provision adopted by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which has delivered about 40,000 housing units in approximately 40 year, and public private partnership (PPP) initiatives through Development Lease Agreements (DLAs).

Expectation is that the DLAs will help to diversify the economy, grow SMEs and local capacity, evolve into something that is sustainable which majority of Nigerians can benefit from by getting them on the housing ladder. The DLAs and PPPs, under the Construction Finance Initiative, target to deliver 21,008 housing units with a current delivery rate of 2,750 completed units over a decade.

As feasible and laudable as this new policy seems, housing industry stakeholders have faulted the government on its failure to engage the private sector in its intentions. “Government does not have enough resources to carry out all its projects”, says Ugochukwu Chime, President, Real Estate Developers’ Association of Nigeria (REDAN), wondering why government should leave out private sector that has enormous resources to drive the economy to prosperity.

On his part, Kunle Awobodu, Second Vice President, Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), notes that “Fashola’s performance in the housing sector in the last one year is not yet visible,” pointing out that there is nothing on ground as housing project anywhere in the country.