The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association(GREDA) has called on the government to open fresh dialogue between the two parties to find a more pragmatic solution to the housing challenges in the country. According to the Association, with the housing deficit now at about 2.1 million per annum, a deeper discussion on the matter has become even more imperative, if the government is committed to bridging the widening gap. The President of the association, Mr. Patrick Ebo Bonful, made the call in Accra when he led a delegation to visit some of the Estates of the JL Properties, one of the leading real estate developers in the country last Thursday.

“We need to find a real meaning to “affordable” and be able to target, particularly people who fall within the very lower income bracket, to provide houses for them” he said. For instance, he said “GREDA was ready to help the government to provide social houses for the poor but noted that this could be done if the government is committed to help the homeless in society by providing shelter for them.

In the 2011 population and housing census conducted in Ghana, there were a number of policy recommendations to improve the supply, demand and efficiency of the housing market in Ghana. The findings of the census make the call for dialogue between the government and GREDA necessary, if the challenges in the sector is to be addressed.

It was recommended that there was the need to promote greater private sector participation in housing delivery, facilitate private sector access to land; establish and operate National Housing Trust Fund as a mechanism to leverage private capital into housing and infrastructure investments and promote housing development through public private partnerships (PPP).

It is also identified the need to create an environment conducive to investment in rental housing; promote rent-to-own housing schemes; encourage rehabilitation of disused/abandoned properties into rental housing; encourage mandatory inclusion of rental housing in slum upgrading; encourage houseowners’ associations to adapt rental housing expansion schemes. Again, it highlighted the need to accelerate home improvement(upgrading and transformation) of existing housing stock; promote neighborhood level house maintenance through enhancing capacities of community management associations and property management companies; develop maintenance bonds where house owners pay to fund/maintain their houses through facility management firms; enforce building codes and regulations.  Another important issue the report recommended had to do with the need to promote social and low-income housing: consult, train and involve communities and households to provide offers in development of infrastructure; establish MMDA’s Rent Deposit Guarantee scheme in conjunction with financial institutions to provide rent advances guarantees; encourage housing cooperatives to access funds through banks; promote use of local building materials; promote community-led infrastructure financing arrangements . It also did not lose sight of the need to upgrade existing slums and prevent occurrence of new ones: formulate and implement slum infrastructure improvement policy; progressively integrate slums through revitilisation, redevelopment and regeneration; empower slum dwellers to be economically viable to sustain their livelihoods and participate in decision making.  It is observed that good as these recommendations have been, they continue to remain on paper or are implemented in trickles, a phenomenon which is not helping to close the gap but rather widen it.

Mr. Bonful said the association has made available to the government, a number of proposals which border on land reforms, review of the mortgage laws to accommodate more people and give better offers to allow more people to access them. He said the association was ready to talk “because we know we have something to offer Ghanaians and with the help of government we can provide shelter for those who do not have”.

Mr. Bonful commended the Executive Chairman of JL Properties, Dr. James Orleans-Lindsay, his foresight and the efforts he had made to bridge the housing gap in the country. For his part, Dr Orleans-Lindsay said the real estate developers were ready to help the government to provide housing for the vulnerable in society. “We build mostly for the middle to upper income class. However, although those facilities are gated with security, we find the homeless surround our clients by building stores and other small structures around them. These bring issues of security and if we do not take care, we will have the situation as in Sao Paolo in Brazil where the lives of the rich are always put in danger by the poor.” Dr. Orleans-Lindsay expressed the hope that the dialogue would be opened as soon as possible to help find a pragmatic solution to the situation.

~By  Charles Benoni Okine