Stakeholders chart course for affordable housing

To ensure affordable housing, experts have called for comprehensive and collaborative efforts by all stakeholders in the built environment.

According to them, such collaboration must be planned and coordinated to achieve home for all Nigerians.

The experts, who spoke during the commemoration of the 2020 World Habitat Day, in Lagos with the theme, “Housing for All: A Better Urban Future, stressed the importance of data in determining the demography of the housing needs, strata and types of the population.

The guest speaker and renowned architect, Dr. Tunde Reis, who spoke on the theme, lamented inadequate infrastructure in the Lagos Central Business districts (CBDs), saying it has impeded housing development.

To ensure housing for all, he urged government to prioritise data collection to determine those who need housing, their locations and cadre.

Dr. Reis, who is the founder and president of First World Communities Limited also urged government to provide enabling regulation and policies that will drive affordable housing.

The retired Brigadier-General, also asked for the segmentation of end users, incorporation of the informal sector of the economy in planning, enactment of the enabling regulations and policies to provide affordable housing.

Chairman, Lagos State branch of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), Mr. Dotun Bamigboye, said government should be more proactive in housing delivery.

This, he said, should be achieved by constructively engaging relevant stakeholders in the built environment.

In his remarks, the chairman, Lagos state branch of Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON), Kamil Ademola Sanni, said the organisation is partnering with the state government to chart a better future for towns and cities.

He said ATOPCON in collaboration with the government have instituted awards of recognition for three communities in the state’s three senatorial districts.

Sanni said the objective of the award is to encourage communities and neighbourhoods to adopt best practices in the planning and development of their neighbourhoods in accordance to laid down physical planning laws, regulations and standards.

Earlier, the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu declared his commitment towards constructing more homes for Lagosians.

This, he said, will be done through pragmatic models that will incorporate private sector partnership, encourage local contents and cut costs while also creating employment.

Speaking through his deputy, Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, he said his administration had returned the State to the National Housing Fund and appointed the state’s Building Investment Company (LBIC) Plc as the sole mortgage provider to reduce the housing deficit.

The Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Dr. Idris Salako, said the government had a clear understanding of housing and was matching up to its successful delivery in cost-efficient, pragmatic and innovative manner.

He said the state had accorded urban planning and development the deserved attention as avenues for improving the physical environment and the living conditions of its people.

He said the government has extended planning permit to Non-Schemed Areas by providing development guide plans for excised villages to ensure orderly and sustainable development.