Corporations seek support for mass rental housing

The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN) has called for the adoption of mass rental housing as viable option for sustaining their existence in the country.

It advised state governments to support their housing agencies in driving the scheme, stressing that the model reduces the impact of housing shortage, especially on low-income group who formed the majority of Nigeria’s population.

AHCN also charged the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to provide revolving housing fund and inject a minimum of N500 billion loans intervention into the real estate industry to make it vibrant.

The association stated this at its national workshop and 99th council meeting entitled, ‘Pragmatic approach to addressing rental and low income housing availability and affordability’ held in Cross River state.

AHCN resolved to sustain its pilot scheme of home ownership off-takers affordability survey database, which commenced first quarter of 2018. The scheme created a verifiable working database of about 1,000 workers per selected state. AHCH partner in the survey is Value Chain Project Consultants.

The corporation bemoaned the nation’s increasing housing shortage and affordability problem, saying that there is lack of corresponding actions to match the demand. AHCN advocated urgent collaboration among stakeholders with realistic strategies that would directly address housing needs of the people.

In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, delegates commended the establishment of Family Homes Funds (FHF) by the government and efforts to make affordable housing available to low income earners through mortgage and rent to own scheme. It urged state governments to make lands available to ensure the success of (FHF).

“The meeting recognises the inherent opportunities in business partnerships in developing business synergies and strategic alliances to reduce cost and expand into new markets in housing provision and called for effective partnership models and synergies between Family Homes Funds and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, FMBN to enhance development funding and wholesale mortgage lending and origination to reduce housing shortfall in Nigeria.

It commended the recent FMBN review of the off-takers guarantee which makes it acceptable and bankable in favour of housing corporations to enable them access construction loans from commercial banks and calls on all state governments to support their housing corporations to take advantage of these opportunities for mass housing projects”.

The communiqué signed by the president of AHCN Muhammed Adamu and the Secretary General, Mr. Olusola Martins declared that lack of foreclosure laws to safeguard investors as one of the impediments to attraction of housing finance to the sector.

It encouraged governments to speed up the adoption of legal framework for judicial enforcement of mortgages and foreclosure legislations in order to boost investors’ confidence and streamline bureaucracies in the Nigeria’s mortgage market.

AHCN encouraged Nigerians to embrace the use of local building materials as appropriate alternative for addressing availability and affordable housing in Nigeria.

“With the availability of Hydraform and NBRRI technologies, state governments are encouraged to set up pilot scheme of local building materials plants in all the state of the federation to encourage development and acceptance of local building materials in Nigeria. The forum notes and commends the involvement of NBRRI in investigation of building collapse cases in Nigeria and posits that such involvement will promote quality delivery of housing as it will assist to determine the causes of collapse and proffer solutions to generate data bank for building collapses in the country”, it added.