12 June 2009
A real estate expert, Mr Ime Udoetuk, has called on Federal and State governments to come up with policies that will enable low income earners to build their own houses.
Udoetuk said on Wednesday in Lagos that such policies would enable government tackle the housing needs of the poor.
He said that housing the low income earners was a purely social problem and that "governments at all levels should set new criteria in which the poor could attract finance to develop their own houses. According to him, when government wants to build what it calls low cost houses, it ends up spending more on those houses and in the end, it may not build enough to go round the poor.
"The best thing is for government to streamline the process of attracting credit and make such credit attractive to them," he said.
Udoetuk, who is the Principal Partner of Udoetuk & Associates, a firm of estate surveyors and valuers, argued that without this, housing the low income would continue to be a problem.
"The low income will always have accommodation problems since they cannot easily attract housing credit because they do not have the resources. "They cannot easily qualify for housing loans and the cost of building materials is always going up far beyond their reach," he said. Udoetuk said that government could also develop sites and services scheme and subsidise such scheme for the low income earners. (NAN)
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GIVE THEM THE LAND AND WE WILL BUILD THEIR HOUSES. WE WILL ALSO GIVE THEM JOBS AND COVER THEIR MORTGAGES. BALL LIES WITH THE GOVERNMENT!!