Redesigning the Ghanaian housing dream
Is there anything like the Ghanaian housing dream? What is it? Is it achievable and can it helps to reduce the housing deficit figures thrown around like cliches every year? In very simple terms, every Ghanaian - from the lowest paid labourer to the most senior person in the Civil Service and numerous private enterprises - aspires to own his or her own house one day. Very few Ghanaians have built several apartment blocks for rental purposes over the years across the country. At best, few individuals have built walk-up rental units in buildings with courtyards up to four storeys patterned after the traditional one-storey courtyard house where inhabitants share a common kitchen, toilet and bathroom. Problems associated with the maintenance of the courtyard, kitchen, toilet and bathroom are well known in the Ghanaian society.
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Expectations
Is it possible for every Ghanaian to own or build his or her house? The answer is obviously no. The Ghanaian culture contributes immensely to this dream because in many sections of the society many young men and women are expected to get married and start producing children soon after securing jobs. Do these expectations conflict with achieving the Ghanaian housing dream? The answer is yes. Through the years, many people have lived and died in rented housing units. This is very common in the major urban centres and smaller towns across the country but has not in any way dimmed the dream of aspiring to own your house. As a result, across the length and breadth of Ghana, there are numerous buildings at various stages of completion and generally, housing development takes a much longer period from inception to completion.
Public and private housing
Several factors account for the unusually long periods of time needed to complete housing development in Ghana. Among these include land acquisition, lack of mortgage facilities, cost of building materials and lack of technical expertise. Generally, housing development in Ghana is undertaken through two main approaches - public and private housing. Public housing was started by the British colonial masters to provide residential accommodation for the colonial civil servants. This led to the creation of places such as the Ridge and Cantonments in Accra. The Ridge and Nhyiaso in Kumasi and Windy Ridge in Takoradi. After independence, local civil servants moved into these residential areas and the central government tried to continue with public housing development with the establishment of the State Housing Corporation (SHC) and other government agencies. The SHC for example, acquired plots of land and built "estate" houses to be sold to the Ghanaian public. Many Ghanaians patronised their services for various reasons, especially the possibility of adding "extensions" to the original building on the rather generous plot of land. The SHC, now the State Housing Company, has undergone various changes over the years and could be described as a pale shadow of itself presently.
Private housing development in Ghana has come under three main categories; low-income housing, middle-income housing and high-income housing. Low-income housing includes vernacular or traditional housing which uses locally available building materials and arguably forms the majority of housing units in the country. In the olden days, many of such vernacular housing units were built through communal labour in the rural areas and hardly involved people who had gone through formal education. Presently, low-income housing also includes the housing units found in the various slums across Ghana. Middle-income housing on the hand, has involved draughtsmen and women, and have been built across the country as well. Generally speaking, the desire here has been to satisfy the housing needs of users. High-income housing, however, generally involves the various building professionals - architects, civil or structural engineers, quantity surveyors service engineers (sometimes) and are found in well laid out sections of the various urban centres in Ghana. They are built in the most modern building materials and a lot of Ghanaians pride themselves in having the "latest" building materials in their houses regardless of whether the chosen colours for various materials are gaudy or not or whether the tiles in the rooms and courtyard are slippery and people are falling down or not. Interestingly, in some suburbs of the larger urban centres such as Accra, Kumasi etc. these three types of private housing can be found in the same area mainly because of the inability of the district, municipal or metropolitan assemblies to effectively maintain and sustain the growth of these human settlements.
Affordability
The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA). GREDA has chosen the upper end of housing delivery service in Ghana. Most Ghanaians cannot afford the cost of their buildings many of which were initially priced in American dollars. Various renditions of such high-end housing developments including the Villagio complex near the Accra Mall, Devtraco and Trassacco estates in Accra have been followed up with others in Kumasi and Takoradi but on a smaller scale. It is alleged that many people who have acquired some of these flats and apartments do live and work outside Ghana.
So how can the majority of Ghanaians have access to decent housing? The term "affordable housing" is being avoided here because it has been flogged so often and means different things to different people. The answer could lie in the use of local building materials. With so many "unemployed" university graduates including free lancing architects, engineers, quantity surveyors etc. who have adequate knowledge in the construction industry, is it not possible for the government to create an enabling environment which will see teams of such graduates leading trained people from the vocational and technical institutions and manual labourers organised along the lines of the old Builders Brigade of the Nkrumah era or the formation of private companies with seed money (from the government or private business people) to build housing units for both the private and public sectors across the country? With the abundance of earth and improved technology such as rammed earth, bricks (both kiln dried and sun dried), many housing units could be built at reduced costs as compared to the present situation. This can be done in a sustainable manner in the districts, municipalities and metropolises so that we can move away from the slums and uncontrolled housing development that have become common across the country. As stated above, it is impossible for every single Ghanaian to build his or her own house and new approaches to housing development must be explored. The Ghanaian housing dream needs to be redesigned.
The writer is Past Dean, Faculty of Architecture and Building Technology, KNUST and Past Head, Department of Architecture, KNUST
