2.7 million people occupy single rooms in Ghana

The UN-Habitat Housing profile on Ghana has indicted that about 2.7 million
in urban Ghana occupy single rooms. It says Many households are likely to be caretakers of semi-completed buildings.

 The report suggested that ′it is important that compound or similar means of living cheaply are not simply removed from the palette of acceptable housing because the middle class think they are outmoded.

The relationship between housing cost and income is a contentious issue in Ghanaian urban studies. Many authors quote the typical labourer’s wage, or the minimum wage, or that of a junior civil servant, or a new graduate, and compare it with the cost of a small dwelling built by State Housing Company.

Through this, some really high house cost to income ratios can be detected.
The UN-Habitat housing profile reports that a well-researched work on Accra has examined the cost of housing against incomes and found them so expensive that it declares Accra to be a “superstar city” one in which a high demand for housing is not met by supply and housing remains in short supply and expensive.

They find that housing market constraints imposed by policies drive prices up. Such policies as minimum plot size that most people cannot afford, or the insistence on self-contained housing by the formal sector, carry welfare costs that are high and regressive.

Furthermore, the policies prevent such measures as easier finance or remittances from increasing the growth in housing supply as much as they should if they were not driving prices up.

In addition, although the research found that mean and median incomes are much higher in Accra than  Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa, housing conditions are considerably worse. In other words, policies impede the improvements in housing conditions that would be expected from higher incomes.

In addition, policies on plot sizes and plot coverage create land parcels that are too expensive for most people to afford, impose a tax on renters and redistribute the money to home owners, and so set an artificially high threshold price on self-contained dwellings.

The GLSS (Ghana Statistical Service, 2008) shows that, out of a total mean urban household expenditure of GHC3,620, urban households spend a mean of only 9 per cent or GHC325 per annum on housing, water, electricity and gas. In per capita terms, the mean is only 8 per cent or GHC115 spent on housing, water, electricity and gas.
GLSS 528 shows that households in Accra spend only 4.5 per cent of their household expenditure on housing and urban households elsewhere spend only 2.2 per cent on housing, giving an urban total of 3.2 per cent.

The housing sector profile’s survey in 2010 shows very different house costs between Accra and the rest and between the highest cost sectors in each city and the lowest.

The highest cost sector in Accra has a mean rent of GHC326 per month plus GHC200 for maintenance, giving a total of about 19 per cent of expenditure on housing.

In the lowest cost areas of Accra, however, the monthly payment has a mean of only GHC42 with GHC5 on maintenance, a total of only 10 per cent of expenditure. In the other cities, highest mean rents range from GHC97 in Kumasi to only GHC25.5 in Sekondi-Takoradi. In the lowest rent areas, means are only GHC16 in Sekondi- Takoradi to GHC13 in Tamale.

By: Samuel Mantey
Property Express
Email: Sammyoo3@yahoo.com