The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) has said that as part of strategies for realizing its mandate, it has come up with a four-year action plan aimed at delivering 106,000 housing units. The authority since inception 37 years ago has been able to deliver only 37,000 housing units in 76 states across the country by direct efforts. Bello Issa, FHA's executive director, estate services, who disclosed this in a paper he presented at the just concluded Lagos Housing Fair, also hinted that in 2001, the authority embraced public private partnership (PPP) as a complementary channel for housing delivery, adding that through this channel, about 2000 housing units have been delivered.
He disclosed further that to achieve the action plan target, FHA has positioned itself in the forefront of providing a national working definition of what basic housing is; minimum plot size; alternative construction materials and technology and strengthening her operations to enhance affordability and accessibility. Issa whose paper was titled 'Access to Land ans ousing Delivery: FHA's Thinking' listed the authority's strategies for sustainable mass housing delivery which included direct development, public private partnership, public-public partnership, co-operative housing, site and services, new town development, rental housing and regeneration.
He stated that effective housing delivery in the country is hindered by a number of institutional, regulatory and technical challenges including government policies and intervention strategies; finance and mortgage systems; mode of construction; technical issues, and land acquisition. He noted that housing delivery is capital intensive, suggesting that there should be large capital injection into housing in order to achieve meaningful housing delivery.
According to him, government at different levels had introduced intervention strategies and polices at different times with little results, lamenting that the National Housing Programmes of the Federal Government in the past were never sustained while the efforts of the state governments were not target-driven and in most cases bedeviled by poor implementation. In a veiled defence of his agency's below average performance, the executive director noted that "government agencies through which these programmes were delivered lacked funding and strategic capacities due mostly to absence of determined support from government".
He added: "In Nigeria, absence of large capital for mortgage financing coupled with high interest rate, short term mortgages and cumbersome requirements for accessing loans constitute constraints to effective housing delivery". Absence of the right technology for mass housing, he said, has also hindered housing delivery, adding that lack of an enabling environment for construction materials industries to thrive has led to mass importation of building materials which affects cost of housing delivery and affordability. Issa called for a review of the Land Use Act as a way of introducing more flexibility in land acquisition and administration.
"Land, which is the primary ingredient in any housing development is currently difficult to access; insecurity of rights, lengthy and expensive land transactions coupled with the absence of serviced lands increase the cost of construction which in turn makes housing affordability difficult". As a way of bracing up to these challenges, he recommended that both state and federal land authorities should relax the conditions for land acquisition and an amendment to the FHA's enabling laws to give it powers to acquire land from communities. "Based on agreements with the communities, little or no compensation will be paid; the authority will design the layout of the land and thereafter bring in private developers to provide the infrastructure and these serviced plots will be developed and given to the communities according to their affordability arrangements", he said.
Source: BusinessDay Online