Housing experts have called for the conversion of abandoned and underutilised public buildings into affordable homes, arguing that the government should maximise existing assets before committing scarce resources to new estates.

The call was made at the opening session of ‘Reclaiming the City’, a webinar series convened by the Rethinking Cities Initiative and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung to examine Lagos’ housing crisis and growing stock of idle public properties.

The session brought together the Lagos State Commissioner for Housing, Moruf Akinderu-Fatai, urban researchers, developers and green building professionals, who questioned the continued construction of new housing while publicly funded buildings remain unused.

A policy brief, Reclaiming the City: Empty Public Buildings and the Manufactured Housing Scarcity in Lagos, stated that the housing crisis was driven not only by population growth and land scarcity but also by policy choices that have left valuable buildings and serviced land idle.

It noted that most Lagos residents earn less than N100,000 monthly, while about 92.7 per cent of the workforce operates in the informal economy, limiting access to conventional mortgages and formal housing finance. Many low-income households spend 40 to 60 per cent of their income on rent, often paid one or two years in advance.

The brief proposed a graduated levy on privately owned buildings and serviced land deliberately kept vacant for speculation, with proceeds channelled into a ring-fenced Inclusionary Housing Trust Fund for affordable and social housing.

It also recommended that suitable idle public buildings should be repurposed rather than sold, with properties potentially licensed to cooperatives, community organisations and other social housing providers under transparent arrangements.

The panel session was moderated by Dr Esther Thontteh and hosted by the Founder and Executive Director of the Rethinking Cities Initiative, Deji Akinpelu. It was opened by the Director, Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, University of Lagos, Prof. Timothy Nubi, and Monika Umuna of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Lagos office.

Nubi argued that reclaiming empty buildings depended less on funding than on effective institutional frameworks and resolving the legal and financial constraints that keep serviceable public assets out of use.

Former South-West Vice President of the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), Debo Adejana, said the affordability crisis had reached a point where even households earning N100,000 to N150,000 monthly struggle to secure decent accommodation in many parts of Lagos.

Adejana, however, cautioned that adaptive reuse was not automatically cheaper, saying it could deliver savings in construction materials, costs and carbon emissions where existing structures remained sound, but poorly assessed projects could become financially risky.
A Leverhulme Professor of Planning and Heritage at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, Taibat Lawanson, said government intervention should go beyond building units for sale and give greater attention to public and social rental housing.

She argued that publicly funded housing should remain accessible to low-income residents rather than eventually being absorbed into the open market.

Lawanson called for a comprehensive inventory of vacant public properties by estate surveyors and valuers to establish their location, condition, functionality and potential for adaptive reuse.

She said the inventory would provide the technical basis for converting idle assets into housing and other socially beneficial uses while ensuring that planning decisions are based on reliable information.

Oluseyi Orenuga of the Green Building Council Nigeria (GBCN) argued that retrofitting existing structures could offer environmental benefits over demolition and new construction. He said sustainability should be integrated into housing development from the outset rather than treated as an afterthought.

Akinderu-Fatai acknowledged the challenge, citing high construction costs, inadequate housing data and declining property sales. He said the state was exploring vertical development to accommodate more residents within Lagos’ limited land space.

The commissioner said the state had identified several abandoned buildings, but ownership and jurisdiction issues, particularly involving federal properties, had complicated efforts to return them to productive use.

He also highlighted plans to strengthen rental housing and develop homes around rail stations and major transport corridors.

According to him, a proposed bill before the Lagos State House of Assembly would address aspects of landlord-tenant relations and encourage more sustainable rental systems.

Akinderu-Fatai acknowledged the difficulty of financing low-income housing and sustaining partnerships with private developers but reaffirmed the state’s commitment to working with multiple stakeholders.

He said he would propose providing seed land for housing development and explore building permit arrangements to support the upgrading of informal and low-income communities.