The Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA), has called on the Federal Government to look into several options to tackle the country’s housing deficit.

NIA made this known during a visit to the Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola.

The Nation reports that NIA’s President, Tonye Braide, said the institute had developed concepts on mass housing, which proposed an executing template based on the mass production of the components required to build the houses rather than looking at the completed house.

One of these is the social housing model. Another model looks at the provision of a property exchange mechanism,where housing is treated as an exchangeable commodity with mobility through the housing types and based on income expansion, family size and zoning typologies.

According to Braide, this would create an architectural value chain in the production process and open access to an array of Small and Medium scale Enterprises funding at single-digit interest rates for component fabrication, which will also culminate in housing development.

“Low cost housing will be executed along the mass production templates used in the manufacturing industry. Standardisation of components will be key and an operating logistics platform can be developed to distribute the components around a localised area network. This will result in architectural component fabrication plants in every local government area, producing everything needed to complete a basic house,” he explained.

This, he explained, would ensure that indigenous small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) get the basic raw materials from local components which are in abundance in local governments.

“If each component fabrication cluster employs 100 persons, then about 75,000 new upstream jobs will be instantly created. The downstream sector will consist of the masons, carpenters and other artisans,” he said.

The minister was quoted as saying “we must be at the forefront of resetting minds about the realities of home ownership. To achieve social housing, the money has to come from somewhere. Nigerians must accept that social housing has to be paid for,” adding that that no community had achieved 100 per cent home ownership, no matter how cheap or affordable.

Source: The Nation