An evaluation of government policies in the provision of low income housing in Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

This research evaluates the existing housing provision and Government housing policies in Benin City, Nigeria. It evaluates subsidized public housing, sites and services, and upgrading schemes; and the low income groups' level of affordability, through the application of economic demand models - hedonics and the present value techniques. While the hedonics is used as a predictive technique for policy evaluation, the present value technique is used to evaluate and assess the Government's low income housing policies and the target population's (low income group) level of affordability respectively. After the evaluative and the assessment exercise, it was found that the sites and services is the preferred policy option, although its successful implementation would not be possible unless Mortgage Financing is introduced and the bottlenecks and constraints inherent with the low income housing market is removed. Through the Mortgage Financing Model constructed by the researcher, it was possible to determine the amount of mortgage grant affordable by households on different income grades. It was also found that, apart from the SPSSX computer package hitherto used for the analysis of hedonics, a micro software package modified by the researcher from Davis (1973) Fortran Program developed for Geological and Engineering Surveys could be used for analysing the hedonics technique. This is an advantage to most developing countries where a large SPSSX computer package may not be easily accessible. The research was concluded by highlighting areas for further investigation.