Don Wants Govt To Tackle Housing Difficulties

A senior lecturer at the
    Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Dr. Victor Obinna, has said  that there are no concrete  measures in place to ease  the difficulties in providing affordable  housing.
He said that delay in the issuance of titles and certificates of occupancy,  minimal  access  to credit for private developers and the failures of government to regulate  rent have  also caused high rent in accommodation.
Obinna who  made his feelings on the housing situation known to journalists in Port Harcourt, also posited that most of the unoccupied housing estates  in  some  popular cities in Nigeria, were  privately built and that the rent could not be within the reach of the poor class.
“There is no regulatory mechanism to compel private developers to rent out their  houses within a given period because it is not within the purview of the government,” he said.
The don said that most of the private  developers were not abreast with the federal government’s policy on affordable housing  which had contributed to the high cost of accommodation in major  cities.
“Housing is one of the basic needs of life as good housing leads to higher productivity and self esteem, if you are well housed, you have better  health,” he said.
Obinna observed that there were lots of conditions that poor  people could not  meet in accessing the mortgage  finance funds which  were also insufficient in the face of increasing demand.
He said that the National Housing Fund (NHF) Act of 1992 that was designed to generate  funds for chanelling into  the mortgage institutions had  not worked  very well in the country for housing development.

Corlins Walter