Social Housing In Nigeria

Because housing is basic and an essential need, whether you are low or no income earner, you still need to be housed. That is the concept behind social housing. How do we provide housing for people who earn too low to be able to provide for themselves, even rent?

Three categories of people come to play here in making this happen: groups, professional and non-professional associations, government, and NGOs, corporate bodies in line with their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can decide to do housing for the less privileged. Government could also carry it out as a social contract they signed during their campaign, they have that responsibility to provide that.

It’s actually the right of a citizen to be housed and sheltered. That is the angle should examine it from. There are NGOs here and there whose main responsibility is to ensure that people are housed.

The figures we have is quite disturbing if we don’t take social housing serious. Take for instance the survey carried out for Lagos state in 2010; it tells us that we have 3.6 million households in Lagos. They went by the assumption that 5 people make a household, and if the population is about 18 million at the time then Lagos has 3.6 million households. The alarming thing is that 91% of this people live below poverty line, quite a situation! In the civil service, the minimum wage is N18, 000 and I believe it’s lower in the formal sector, where you have people who don’t earn up to N10, 000 in a month.

If you earn N18, 000 and statutorily you are expected not to spend more than about 30-33% of your income on your housing needs. 30% of N18, 000 is how much? That’s about N5, 400!  Where and how many places can you find apartments at this amount? It’s the dilemma people live with. This is for someone earning the minimum wage in the country, and we figured that 91% are even below this in a way. It’s a huge challenge. It’s as good as no income.

The truth about this situation is that they need to be taken care of, otherwise the whole system is not safe. I am aware of the effort of government at the national level, even some state governments too. I know of a particular NGO that is championing that for Lagos state and is about to round it up right now.

The whole element is that the private sector is being encouraged to come up with their own contribution to this aspect of social housing. The NGOs too are been encouraged to do their own lot, such that someone can at least stay in a place for a period of time without paying at all, or paying something so minimal it can be considered to be ridiculous.

We are using the Lagos indices to work, because Lagos is a good representation of the country. You may wonder, why bother attempting to build or own a house if your income cannot take care of it. Note that here we are not talking owning or building a house, we are talking accommodation. People must be accommodated somehow. It’s a social contract, that’s why it doesn’t really matter who gets involved to help out, because we do have a situation on our hands.

You would note also that in most housing schemes, rent is more preferred to ownership, if ownership does come to play, it’s like the stage in the ladder. Its almost like a rehab camp kind of arrangement, because you are not expected to stay in a particular social class especially when it is the bottom forever.

While one finds themselves at that level, their accommodation should be catered for, and as things improve, one can graduate to other more self-reliant form of accommodation. There are so many things that would have to be considered.

There is the eligibility factor, how would a body or government handling this responsibility determine who is eligible? They would have to come up with some criteria for that, even though we don’t forget its basically for the low and no income.

Then again, there is the issue of duration. How long is one expected to be housed by the scheme? What is the dynamics at play, is it rent or ownership? Social housing management has to be considered too. You don’t want to put people in a place where you can’t manage and sustain the facility.