HOUSING: All you need to know about FGN’s Mass Housing Scheme
……The Launch of the National Social Housing Programme under the ESP:
• In June 2020, President Buhari of Nigeria approved the 2.3 Trillion Naira Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) prepared by the Osinbajo-led Economic Sustainability Committee.
• The Federal Government mass housing scheme is one of the planned schemes under the ESP targeted at providing low-income houses to over 1.5 million Nigerian families and creating 1.8 million jobs in the process.
• To achieve these goals, the Family Homes Fund will begin the construction of over 300,000 housing units next week. A minimum of 400 houses is expected to be built in each of the 774 LGAs in the country and the FCT.
• The social housing project will cost over N400 billion and sites where the housing project will commence have already been identified across various geo-political zones by the Federal Government.
• These sites include those in Ekiti and Ogun in the Southwest; Enugu, and Abia in the Southeast; Delta, and Edo in the South-south; Yobe, and Bauchi in the Northeast; Kaduna andj Katsina in the Northwest; Nasarawa and Plateau in the North-central; and sites in Abuja.
• The 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units will cost as little as between N1.8miliion to N2million, while financial assistance would be available for Nigerians to pay the mortgage.
• The form of financial assistance that will be made available to Nigerians will be mortgage loans at low interest rates and without collateral.
• Under the Social Housing program of the ESP, there would also be Rent to Own option as part of the Buhari administration’s resolve to enable the common man own his own home.
• To kickstart the social housing projects, the CBN has already committed to a N200 billion facility and the Ministry of Finance has guaranteed 5% of that facility.
• Financing will be arranged through the designation of a Homes’ Warehousing Agent who will purchase the completed homes from the developers. Individual buyers will then purchase homes from these Home’ Warehousing Agents.
• The implementing agency is Family Homes Fund Ltd and it has mobilized thousands of cooperatives groups across the country as the main warehouse agents to mobilize low-income buyers.
• For instance, FHF recently met with 93 Cooperative Leaders from the 6 geographical zones, under the aegis of the Co-Operatives Federation of Nigeria.
• Focusing on job creation under the social housing project, jobs will be created from the need for the local production of building materials and housing inputs such as doors, windows, hinges, frames, cement, paints, etc. For instance, about 1.5m doors would be needed, 1.8m windows, 7.8m hinges amongst other input needs.
• Building sites will also function like factories for the manufacturing of these house inputs to increase local production of building materials and save costs on the importation of building products.
• The social housing project will also employ both the services of established developers and young small-medium scale professional contractors (architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, accountants, etc). These groups will in turn employ the needed artisans.
