By Ladi Patrick
Director, University of Lagos Centre for Housing Studies, Prof Olugbenga Timothy Nubi has urged the federal government to implement Home Implementation Loan to tackle housing shortage and flooding in the rainy season across the federation.
Nubi, who made the call in a telephone interview with Viewpoint Housing News in Abuja, noted that until government commences home loan implementation, a system that allows developers to access loan for already existing homes for continues maintenance, the poor cannot live in affordable decent homes.
The professor, who was reacting to the federal government’s intention to create a fund for developers in the real estate sector who have the capacity to repay the loan as at when due noted that the planned N200 billion loan to the developers should not be targeted to building new houses but it should also be devoted towards scaling up already existing homes to avoid the predicted flood during the raining seasons.
According to him, “These planned loan by CBN must not be focused only on new houses, those who have houses that are in a state of repair should be given equal opportunity as developers who have lands and want to build new houses”.
He pointed out that, “There were predictions of flood this year hence the need to plan beyond the Coronavirus pandemic because the rainy season has set in and if adequate measures are not put in place to address these challenges of flood, the nation will face a great challenge.
“There is need for the government to scale up plans on how to improve already existing homes to avoid flood in the country,” he maintained.
He added, “There was a time in 1977 that there were a lot of abandoned buildings all over the country, so the federal government came up with a policy called the housing ruff and people were given loan to able to ruff their houses and there were a lot of houses in the market.
This government can also do the same because at a time like this, intervention must not be that they are giving developers money to look for land and build fresh houses but let there be home improvement loan.
“There are people who have already built to a certain level but lack the means to complete such houses. A loan should be made available for developers to repair their dilapidated houses that are already been occupied by tenants because without maintenance houses will not last since these developers have capacity to repay such loans.
“This can be achieved through a partnership with the private mortgage bank and the building societies and the developer’s association by way of providing loans to these developers who already have existing houses to repair drainages and improve on roads and other repairs that could be required to maintain the houses to standard because these are part of infrastructure,” he explained.
He said the program will be successful because most of the developers with existing houses who need money for repairs have a permanent address and they belong to a corporative so the loan will be easily repaid.
Nubi noted that the disappearance of old rickety long buses on Lagos roads was as a result of conscious effort by the state government, which also led to the introduction of BRT buses.
He disclosed that 70 percent of prime land in Lagos state is under slums adding that slums like sickle cell are African problem.
To this end, he enjoined federal, state and local governments to immediately focus on urban regeneration as was done in Liverpool.
