Family Homes Fund to boost cooperative housing

The Managing Director of Family Homes Fund (FHF), Mr. Femi Adewole has said that the programme was set to boost cooperative housing through its rolled out funds.
 
Adewole made this known at a cooperative housing workshop organised by the Nigeria Integrated Social Housing (NISH), Affordable Housing Limited in collaboration with Family Homes Funds (FHF), last week in Abuja.
 
The Family Homes Funds is a Social Housing Programme initiated by the Federal Government to provide inexpensive mortgages for low-income individuals and families across the country.

Under the scheme, which is domiciled in the Ministry of Finance, civil servants who earn salary of 30,000 and above can have access to mortgages to own a home.
 
Adewole said that FHF which was a special purpose vehicle for financial institutions was primarily to facilitate the production of about 500, 000 homes and over 1.5 million job creation.

“It is a very new fund and has been running effectively in the past nine months.
 
He said that the programme had four pillars of funds to achieve home ownership namely affordable housing fund, home loans assistance funds, rental housing fund and land and infrastructure fund.
 
He said that the objectives of cooperative housing could be achieved by developing capabilities of the market with workshops to identify support for capacity base for set of cooperatives with set goals. 

According to him, cooperatives in an organised sector can be transformational enablers of affordable housing delivery particularly to people on low and middle income.
   
Adewole said that Nigeria could replicate what other housing cooperatives in other parts of the world were doing adding that Urban Housing Cooperative in India owned about 4.5 million homes between them over the last 10 years .

Adelakun said that funding, high cost of land as well as high cost building materials have become major challenges in the sector but that if governments at all levels synergize with existing cooperatives to raise above amount, most of the problems would have been solved.

Speaking on the theme of the workshop, ‘’Financing Affordable Housing Through Cooperatives ‘’ Adelakun stated that the objective of the workshop is to organize, empower and acquaint cooperatives  with innovative housing principles  and sensitize them on how to aggregate members equity contributions through savings schemes towards effectively and sustainable delivery of affordable housing to cooperators..

He noted, ‘’For sustainability, housing off-takers financing must be at single digit interest rate if we are to achieve a sustainable  delivery of affordable housing, efforts of government and its agencies like the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), FHF and the Federal government Staff Housing Board offering six per cent , five per cent and three per cent interest rates respectively are appreciated.’

Former Managing Director, Police Mortgage Bank, Benson Iyohmere, also underscored the role of cooperatives in affordable housing delivery.

Iyohmere said that since government could not adequately provide direct housing to people in need of shelter, cooperative housing should be the alternative means.

He said that one of the reasons why Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) could not reach out to many workers was because of non-remittance of the National Housing Fund (NHF) contributions by some employers.
 
Iyohmere added that FMBN was presently dwelling on Cooperative Development Loan and had seized dwelling on Estate Development Loan due to defaulters.
 
According to him, Nigerians should come together to pool resources through cooperative means to achieve affordable housing.
 
The Registrar, Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON), Dr. Peter Kuroshi, decried the challenges hindering housing delivery in the country hence underscored the need for regulation in the sector.
 
Kuroshi said that apart from affordability quality and standardisation should be encouraged in housing construction value chain.

“Most cooperatives are committed to housing projects not knowing precisely what it entails in terms of standardisation in building process and cooperative profit management,’’ he said.