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Housing policy in Ghana
HABI¹A¹ IN¹¸. Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 245—257, 1998 ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0197-3975/98 $19.00#0.00
PII: S0197-3975(98)00009-5
Housing Policy in Ghana: Towards a Supply-Oriented Future A. GRAHAM TIPPLE* Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas (CARDO), University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK DAVID KORBOE Department of Housing and Planning Research, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to review past and present housing policies in Ghana, particularly the 1993 National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993, Policy Planning and Evaluation ºnit, Ministry of ¼orks and Housing, Accra), in the context of housing supply for the low income majority. The current international policies embodied in the Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS) (UNCHS, 1990) and the Global Plan of Action of Habitat II (GPA) (UNCHS, 1996) have provided a framework within which current housing policies are to be formulated with the intention of cranking up housing supply. We suggest some characteristics of Ghanaian housing and urban society which demand different approaches. In that context, we recommend means by which current policies can be made more supply-efficient by building on strongly held beliefs and attitudes rather than through the imposition of alien market-oriented value systems. ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keywords: housing policy; finance; tradition; Ghana
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF HOUSING POLICY In the first-half of the 20th century, the colony of the Gold Coast (including Ashanti and the Northern Protectorate) had a fairly standard attitude towards housing development for the time (up to Independence in 1957). It began with an impetus to house British Civil Servants in some splendour separate from the local people. This was partly to prevent the spread of malaria, yellow fever, and other debilitating diseases to the newcomers. Planning and sanitation measures were closely intertwined but little was done to improve the housing conditions of the majority of the local population. Some improvements were made as a response to an outbreak of plague in Kumasi (Brown, 1978) and the earthquake in Accra in 1939 (Gold Coast, 1946). However, the main programmes for improvement had to wait until after the Second World War, the new emphasis on colonial development, and the need to show some gratitude to the brave lads returning from the battle fronts to their colonial homelands. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a few thousand small dwellings
* Corresponding author.
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were erected for veterans and junior civil servants. These joined the estates built following the earthquake to establish the state housing sector in the main cities. Since Independence in 1957, the Ghana government’s housing provision activity has been carried out in Tema New Town by the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and in the main cities by the State Housing Corporation (SHC) which constructed about 24,000 single household dwellings between 1957 and 1990 (Ghana, 1993). While, for example, government-built houses comprised about 20% of all the houses in Kumasi in 1988, they are so small compared to the other houses that they comprise only 7% of the rooms.1 This is after they were extended as a result of the initiatives taken by their users at no cost to the government.2 For all its small size, the state sector has taken a prominent place in government policy. The First Republican (Nkrumah) government used it as a way of intervening in population distribution through planning housing in towns where employment opportunities were planned (Ghana, 1959). Much noise and energy has been expended in establishing and promoting methods of increasing efficiency and reducing costs in supply but always the state sector has failed to meet targets and absorbed more resources and attention than its output should have merited. The main policy directions have been in the direct supply of quite a small numbers of dwellings and a number of measures to influence demand. These have included subsidies for the renting and subsequent purchase of government-built dwellings; subsidised interest rates for borrowers from the few institutions concerned with housing finance, and a very successful rent control regime starting in 1943 and only relaxed in 1987. This last reduced the rent to income ratio of the median household to only 2% of expenditure (Malpezzi et al., 1990). At the same time, state financial agencies have been encouraged to invest in so-called low-cost housing. Loans have been available to the fortunate few (typically less than 100 per year in total) from the State Insurance Corporation (SIC), the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), and the First Ghana Building Society (FGBS) but recipients have inevitably been relatively well off and in formal employment. SSNIT and SIC have also constructed estates of housing for rent as capital investments [1485 and 409, respectively, 1985 to 1990 (Ghana, 1993)], but they are unsuited to their raison d’eL tre of securing long-term financial yields while providing housing for low income households. They have been let at rents which are too high for low-income people but are too low to allow a return on the investment sufficient to maintain the capital base. Thus, the housing agencies have been selling them to tenants since 1993. Internationally, policies since the 1970s have been leading away from direct housing provision for low income households. Successive governments in Ghana have tended to adopt these policies without altering them for local circumstances. A project to introduce co-operative housing was tried in Tema during the 1970s (Dawuni, 1980) but it proved very difficult to implement and did not benefit the low income group. There has been an upgrading project in Nima along the lines devised for squatter settlements, even though Nima is not a squatter settlement and its occupant households are more frequently renters than owners and have little to gain in real terms from the project. There have been several efforts to introduce sites and services schemes but with little success and none for the low income group whose problems such schemes are designed to address in other countries. CURRENT HOUSING SUPPLY ¹he national shelter strategy The national shelter strategy (Ghana, 1993) represents the current direction of urban housing policy in Ghana. It was formulated at the Ministry of Works and
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Housing with the assistance of the United Nations. It lists six main objectives: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
improving the quality of shelter; improving the environment of human settlements; making shelter programmes more accessible to the poor; promoting private sector involvement through an enabling policy environment; encouraging rental housing; and promoting orderly growth with infrastructure in place.
The strategy admits that ‘an analysis of the 1991 Development Estimates of the Ministry of Works and Housing reveals that approximately 8 per cent of investment could be classified as going into the target groups, while approximately 50 per cent of investment went into the completion of uncompleted houses, the construction of bungalows for civil servants, the acquisition of SSNIT flats and the rehabilitation of government bungalows’. (Ghana, 1993: part II, p. 85). The consequence of this, that the poor are subsidising the rich, is not lost on the writers of the strategy. It is surely the context in which a revolution in supply policies is required. However, the strategy is firmly based in old institutions and follows lines similar to previous (ineffective) policies. While it makes policy suggestions to enable the inputs to housing, the national strategy follows earlier ill-fated government development plans in proposing annual construction and servicing targets for 1994—1997 which do not reflect the objectives very closely, especially with respect to increasing accessibility for the poor. The targets are as shown in Table 1. These plans are based on the provision, by public or private sector, of 264,000 dwellings. This figure arises from Table 2.7 in Vol. 1 of the National Shelter Strategy and includes housing extra urban households, eliminating the urban shortfall by 2010, and allowing 1% replacement per annum.3 Although this table assumes 13 persons per house (more than two households per house), the planned output shown here is mainly for quite small (single household) dwellings,4 mostly
Table 1. Housing solutions offered by the National Shelter Strategy Housing solutions
Number
Percentage Cost (C mill) Percentage
Percent units from private sector
New units to be completed Upper income 3 bedroom Middle income 2 bedroom Rental units (two rooms) Core houses Uncompleted units to be completed Total new units Existing units
39,570 105,520 52,760 39,570 26,470 263,890
12.6 33.5 16.8 12.6 8.4 83.8
712,260 844,160 105,520 79,140 131,900 1,873,430
36.6 43.4 5.4 4.1 6.8 96.3
100 90 100 50 0 79
Private upgrades Rehabilitation loans Improvement loans Total existing units Plots
15,000 3000 3000 21,000
4.8 1.0 1.0 6.7
3000 6000 6000 42,000
0.2 0.3 0.3 2.2
100 0 0 71
Developed plots Site plus communal services Site plus individual services Total plots
10,000 10,000 10,000 30,000
3.2 3.2 3.2 9.5
16,000 5,000 10,000 31,000
0.8 0.3 0.5 1.6
Total units
314,890
100
1,946,430
C1 million approximately equalled £1,000 at the time of the plan.
100
10 0 0 0.3 71
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for the middle and upper income groups, and a few rented chamber and hall units5 (c. 53,000, about 17% of the planned production). Following past development plans, it is based on increasing the proportion of houses which are single household dwellings, i.e. the type built by GREDA members in the formal sector, rather than encouraging the multihabited compounds and other house forms with many households, usually built in the informal sector. Thus, though the rhetoric of the strategy addresses the need to concentrate on lower cost houses when they are provided through government budgets, the plan figures show a dominance of upper and middle income group housing in the proposed production. Furthermore, the 10% public share (C84 billion) in providing the middle income two-bedroomed units is a considerable proportion of government spending proposed in the housing sector.6 The public sector efforts are to be achieved by actually building dwellings rather than by investing in public—private partnerships which are practised in Malaysia, for example Abdullah (1995), and are so much a part of the enabling strategy. The targets require doubling the production from SHC, etc, in the first year and making further increases in succeeding years. This also seems to reflect past plans, where such efficiency improvements were taken for granted, rather than echoing the reality in which state enterprises have continued to operate well below capacity and even further below plans. A recent housing finance scheme, officially targeted at the low-income population, has signally failed to assist them. The Home Finance Company (HFC) was incorporated in mid-1990 but applicants have to purchase their new housing from registered real-estate developers. Loans have concessionary real interest rates of only 3.5—4.5% above the inflation index. The borrowers are mainly public servants and many had institutional assistance from organisations such as the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the Ghana National Procurement Agency, and the American-owned Volta Aluminium Company. HFC is seen by its officials primarily as a viable financial enterprise; they have no delusions of it being a major lender for low-income housing activity. Policy-makers, on the other hand, have often advertised HFC as the long-awaited solution to the problems of low-income housing finance. The registered private developers (the only suppliers whose products are acceptable to the HFC) find it necessary to build for upper sectors of the market. Thus, their houses are only affordable to public corporations and individuals with very high incomes.7 It is an open secret that a sizeable proportion of such money comes from overseas employment and from dubious local and foreign sources. Thus, the subsidised interest rates, paid for by the public purse, are redistributing income from the majority poor to the fortunate few. ¹raditional and informal sector supply for the vast majority No formal sector finance or any other assistance is available for the majority who develop in any informal way; through the common disqualifiers from the formal sector which affect most housing actually occupied by the poor, particularly not having more than a traditional land lease (as land held thus cannot be used as collateral — see below), or not having planning permission. A great majority of the people in urban Ghana have been housed through small-scale private sector initiatives. Even when government housing budgets were concentrating on establishing a formal sector rental stock, a vast majority of the people were housed by their own efforts and those of the small-scale private landlords. Our recent research project examining housing supply in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum8 shows that house ownership is rarely achieved before the age of 40 and by this time family obligations are likely to be quite onerous. However, new
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builders of houses are less well-off than might be imagined given the large size of houses being built. Taking expenditure as a proxy for income, new owners in 1994 tended to have annual household incomes of about C1.5 million (£1500) or 12 times the minimum wage. Their incomes are only 25—50% higher than renters in the same houses. Thus, it cannot be said that only the rich can afford to build a new house in Ghana.9 The traditional urban housing in Ghana has always been the compound consisting of many rooms opening off a private internal courtyard. In Accra, many of these have been similar to the Yoruba compound of Nigeria with a large house at the front containing double-banked rooms opening off a hallway, and single storey wings at the sides with rooms opening off the courtyard. In Kumasi they have tended to have a single bank of rooms all round the main courtyard but may be two or three storeys high on each side. In Kumasi, 57% of houses were compounds in 1988 (Malpezzi et al., 1990). Compounds have generally been constructed by informal sector builders (those who are not registered and operate largely outside official employment and tax regulations), on plots which are the property of the owners but to which they only have traditional land rights. These plots do not necessarily correspond with official plans. Some houses are built with traditional earth technologies, but increasingly they are in cement blocks with in situ cast reinforced concrete structural elements, especially where more than one storey is to be erected. They tend not to conform with building and planning regulations in such matters as leaving set-back spaces at the edges of the plots, covering only 60% of the plot with buildings, building in materials conforming with British Standards of strength and durability, and having at least one water closet toilet and tap on each floor. Throughout the century, the great majority of the urban population have lived in compound houses and our housing supply data show that compound housing is likely to be important well into the future. In the 1990s, however, there is a trend towards villas and apartments which has begun to dominate the new supply. About half the recent additions to the housing stock have been in the form of compounds and the other half are villas; usually free-standing detached selfcontained dwellings with a mean of six rooms. Often these will start with the erection of a servants’ quarters along the rear boundary but this is as likely to be occupied by the owner or extended family members as by servants. Many remain without the main house for a decade or more as money is collected for the final (main) phase of construction. Construction tends to take years rather than months; the medians in our sample are four years for compounds and 3.5 years for villas. Renting, usually in the private sector from small-scale landlords living in the multihabited house, is and will continue to be very important in urban Ghana. In Accra, 43% of households rent their room or rooms, in Kumasi about three quarters of households rent. There is a growing number of people who occupy their rooms rent-free because they are related to the owner or are part of a lineage group who have inherited their house in common (Tipple and Willis, 1991; Amole et al., 1993). These family house occupants constitute about 48% of households in Accra (GSS, 1995) and 25% in Kumasi (Tipple and Willis, 1991) and are bound to become more common as mortality claims the ageing owners. More than half the households in each city occupy only a single room (GSS, 1995) and only owners regularly have more than one room to call their own (Tipple and Willis, 1991). Occupancy rates are very high, 3.3 persons per room in Kumasi (Malpezzi et al., 1990). The means by which these relatively low income households in Ghana manage to build such large houses appear to hinge on not fulfilling the letter of the building and planning regulations and the low prices for building achieved by informal sector builders. In addition, compounds are much cheaper than the more
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fashionable detached villas, allowing less-well-off householders to become owners. In Kumasi, compounds appear to cost about C3.4 million (£3400), or C 700,000 (£700) per room. Villas, which usually have higher standards of fittings and finishes, cost about C10 million (£10,000), or C1,700,000 (£1700) per room. Mean house cost to income ratios for recent owners of houses are lower for compounds (3.5) than villas (5.4), but neither are particularly high. Compound builders tend to have incomes 40% lower than builders of villas. The formal sector alternatives to these houses are much smaller and more expensive. For example, the highly subsidised one- and two-bedroom bungalows available from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) were priced at C5.4 million and C8.5 million (£5400 and £8500) or more than C2 million (£2000) per room. The commercial builders, whose products qualify for HFC financial assistance, were selling one-bedroom (two-roomed) dwellings at about C8 million (£8000) and two-bedroom (three-roomed) dwellings at C10—11 million (£10—11,000); more than C3 million (£3000) per room. The dwellings proposed in the National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993) are much more expensive than the buildings being constructed by our samples in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum, taking account of inflation, and are in a completely different league of cost per room. Thus, the two- and three-bedroomed dwellings intended for the middle and upper income groups were priced at C8 million and C18 million respectively in 1992; far above our private suppliers’ prices when inflation is accounted for. The lack of loan finance means that almost all house construction takes place for cash. Would-be owners gather materials over a long period before building commences. This is evident from the large piles of cement blocks stacked for many years on and close to building sites. In addition, preferences in roofing material are strongly influenced by sheets of a size which can be stored under beds! Once building starts, cash supply can be very intermittent leading to incremental building. Most villa buildings takes place in horizontal slices (all the foundations, all the walls, all the roof, etc.). Only recently have some villa builders taken to completing and occupying a few rooms at a time in the manner common with multihabited compounds and elsewhere in the world. ¹he importance of extensions Housing extensions are an important housing supply mechanism in urban Ghana. In the 1980—1988 period, for example, Malpezzi et al. (1990) found that a few new houses had been constructed but the housing stock had expanded to accommodate the growing number of people. The expansion had mainly been in extensions, often as extra rooms on the ground floor or, less frequently, the addition of another storey. Our surveys in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum suggest that many extensions are part of a very protracted incremental house building process rather than being the result of a new decision to build taken well after the completion of the house.
SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GHANAIAN HOUSING AND URBAN SOCIETY ¸ack of a market in most real property The tale of inefficiency and failure of formal housing suppliers to perform to plan and the reliance of most householders on the informal sector are not unfamiliar and could probably be told for countless countries in Africa and elsewhere. However,
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there is an added dimension to the housing scene in urban Ghana which complicates the application of internationally developed policies and projects. Land and housing in Ghana are not generally for sale.10 Outside a small governmentcontrolled sector, land is only available for occupation on leases and with titles of only surface user (usufruct). The means of land allocation and leasing conditions in Ghana are extensively documented elsewhere (for example, Bentsi-Enchill, 1964; Ollennu, 1962). It is, however, vital to our discussion to understand that land in Ghana is owned by kin-groups (abusua) which consist of those who have died, those who are alive, and those yet to be born. The material world is seen as part of a larger realm which is inhabited by ancestors who are vigilant and influential over affairs affecting the long-term wealth and wellbeing of the lineage. In this culture, anyone who acts to reduce the lineage for his/her own gain, e.g., by disposing of land, housing, or other real property, is likely to be punished by the ancestors, even to death.11 This system of land and property ownership is the basis of the loyalty and obligation system which gives traditional Ghanaian towns their particular character, especially with respect to strong social controls and very low crime rates. Efforts by the government to ‘modernise’ by reducing traditional land allocation (through Nkrumah’s land legislation, e.g., the Administration of Lands Act, 1962) and the nationalisation debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Kom, 1980), have come to nothing. Land and real property are still traditionally held and show little sign of change. Most of the land in Kumasi and the provincial towns in South and Central Ghana is held by paramount chiefs (Ollennu, 1962). The chiefs can alienate land to members of the stool (as of right) or strangers in exchange for a tribute, known as drink money. The money paid to the chief does not represent an ‘arms-length’ purchase price, it is simply a tribute to the ancestors of the land-holding lineage. Land title registration and document processing procedures are still centralised in Accra and are overlaid on the traditional allocation system. In the North, the system is similar but skins take the place of stools. For land in Accra, the owning bodies are represented by chiefs (Mantsemei), fetish priests (wulomei), quarter heads (akutseiatsemei) and family heads (HUDA (Housing and Urban Development Associates), 1990). While there are some areas where stools gained the rights to allocate land (particularly in Labadi), most quarter heads have remained in control of their land. There are also some landowning families. This rather complicated set of, often overlapping, land allocating entities has led to many very clouded titles with the subsequent delays in development, legal costs, and multiple payment for the right of use of the land. Recently, as part of the new stress on urban management, the land registration system in Accra is being overhauled as a precursor to a national land registry. In the cities, there has also been a ‘modern’ sector where land is allocated through leasehold and administered directly by the government’s Lands Commission.12 However, it is quite small and only accessible to a few very influential (and quite westernised) people. The number of freehold plots in urban areas is insignificant. For Accra, records at the Lands Commission Secretariat indicate that freeholds account for less than 0.1% of the total land area. In addition, state-controlled land is just under 13%. There is no direct link between plot size and price. So, even though the amount paid is now a notional market ‘value’, it is unlikely to be lower for a smaller plot. Plots in Ghana are large by international standards. In established settlements in Kumasi, typical plots measure between 1200 and 3500 m2 though plots of 970—1040 m2 are becoming increasingly common in less established areas where chiefs are carving out smaller, but still substantial, plots to maximise their gains. Throughout the urban areas, the combined effect of large plots and small built areas is low-density urban sprawl resulting in higher infrastructure costs and, therefore, a negative impact on prospects for servicing.
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In most developing countries, squatting has been an alternative land occupation strategy for many of the poor. In Ghana, however, it is very rare mainly due to the close watch kept on the land by local chiefs and, perhaps, a fear of flouting supernaturally underpinned laws of land occupation (Tipple, 1984; KonaduAgyemang, 1991; Korboe, 1993). ¹he need to build for more than one household The importance of lineage obligations causes most would-be owners to want a house which is much larger than their household alone would demand. Most owners are seen as benefactors by poorer members of their lineage and take their obligations to provide accommodation for others very seriously. The average owner in our survey provides accommodation for about 20 people. It is not customary for urban owner households to occupy the whole house and often rooms will be let to tenants or occupied rent-free by the households of family members. Thus, most would-be owners want relatively large houses. While current housing policy in Ghana centres on encouraging individuals to build single household bungalows with three, or at most four, habitable rooms as a single dwelling, current owners and builders tend to provide 8—10 rooms per house. The latter is an efficient way of developing the large plots and should not be replaced by single household dwellings. Ownership of houses is also closely controlled within the same religio-social system as land. We have discussed elsewhere (Amole et al., 1993) the importance of inherited (family) houses as a social safety net in urban West Africa. Although a house may be regarded as the personal property of the original owner while he or she is alive, it will be inherited by the lineage in common with a senior male (abusua panyin) as the first among equals. In many parts of Ghana, the lineage excludes a man’s own children. Although there is legislation to allow close relatives who are not in the deceased’s lineage (e.g. a man’s children in Asante) to inherit the house when the owner dies, litigation by the traditional heirs (brothers and nephews) tends to favour lineage claims. It is quite common to find owners in their fifties and sixties building houses large enough for many households when they might be expected to want just a small dwelling for their retirement years. Similarly, owners who reach advanced age are quite likely to extend their houses even though their own requirements are already well served. The inheritance of a house by the members of an abusua in common, in a culture where its sale is unconscionable, encourages structures which are easily occupied by several loosely linked households. These would ideally have many similar sized rooms each with independent access from semi-public space. Thus, the compound is an ideal form for inherited housing. Mindful of the inevitability of inheritance, policy makers should realise that the owners and occupants of a typical house will not be a single household but rather members of an abusua. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE HOUSING SUPPLY POLICY Currently, national housing strategies in developing countries are increasingly based around the Global Strategy for Shelter (UNCHS, 1990) and the policy directions now embodied in the Global Plan of Action from Habitat II (UNCHS, 1996). The main points arising from these and affecting policy in Ghana are the adoption of enabling shelter strategies and the need for a realistic sector wide strategy which is appropriate to local norms and directed at scaling up supply to a level adequate to meet demand. It is directly in the spirit of both the Global Strategy for Shelter and the Global Plan of Action to shift government policy interventions from any notion to provide
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complete housing or to interfere with the final price of housing through subsidies or rent controls. Any realistic estimate of past performance gives little confidence to agencies such as SHC13 and SSNIT as being able to become major providers. Instead, government efforts and housing budgets should be aimed at enabling the input markets to work effectively, to ensure that the construction industry is encouraged at all levels, and to provide an appropriate and efficient regulatory system to maximise output at affordable prices. We would make the following suggestions for government interventions. Availability of land The traditional system has much to commend it in that it is locally controlled, relatively inexpensive to operate, and potentially equitable in its allocation practices (Okpala, 1977; Tipple, 1984). In addition, and very importantly, the control of land by traditional communities through their chiefs contributes to the security, welfare and loyalty systems of the majority of the people (Tipple, 1985; Korboe, 1993). The main problem for land allocation currently is the clouded nature of many titles and the lack of bankable titles over traditionally allocated land. The former should be largely resolved when the current land registration exercise is complete, the latter would require sensitive extending of the security of the title without taking away the allodial right to the land vested in the community. We recognise that the non-marketability of land is important to the social cohesion of Ghana’s urban people. Thus, the outright ownership required in raising collateral on land could damage the community’s long-term ability to regain the allodial rights to land alienated to an unsuccessful builder and then forfeited to a loaning agency. However, it is unlikely that a finance system that is so sorely needed will develop without forms of collateral on fixed property acceptable to both the traditionalists in the community and to formal financial agencies. In the National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993), the need for foreclosure laws and procedures are articulated. In developing these, however, it is essential that market systems for land transactions, and the ability of loaning agencies to sell land rights to the highest bidder following a foreclosure, are not imposed on the people while beliefs in the sacral nature of land holding are generally held. The exact relationship between traditional beliefs and the acceptance of a market in land rights is a subject on which the current Draft Land Policy (Ghana, 1996) is silent but one on which research should be undertaken jointly by specialists in religion and land. Availability of finance The most important mechanism for improving housing supply is undoubtedly a source of finance. It is the lack of finance which mostly impedes the rapid completion of houses, and which delays their start until late in a person’s life. The ability to borrow over a long period for house construction and extension is undoubtedly a felt need among suppliers and potential suppliers of housing in Ghana. Finance for new house construction The vast majority of prospective owner-builders must still use the cash in their wallets, so to speak, for buying leases on land and paying material suppliers, artisans and service agencies. In our housing supply research, the median recentbuilder household has an income (in 1993 prices) of under C2 million (£2000) per annum and is building five to ten rooms costing about C6 million (£6000). Thus, loans of C3—8 million (£3—8000) at 1993 prices would suffice to help financing the great majority of houses found in our survey. There would appear to be no reason
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for reducing interest rates below those prevailing in the banking market as the house cost to income ratio is only about three so does not constitute exceptional levels of housing investment. There also appears to be no reason to make them repayable over the usual 25 years as any spreading of the financing load (even for as little as five years) would be an improvement for current builders relying on cash. It may, thus, be more appropriate to have five to ten year repayment periods. The loans should be released in stages for the purchase of the land lease, and financing the various stages of building in order to reduce the debt burden to a minimum during the building process. The issue of securing the loan on the land and then the buildings and the need for some fundamental changes in the way land is regarded arises again here. Once again, we would reiterate that the need for financial security must be matched with maintaining the integrity of community control of land. Finance for extensions It is probable that financial assistance for extensions, in the form of market rate loans of C1 to 2 million, would assist owners wishing to extend. Currently, almost no finance is targeted at house extenders and there are no tax or other financial incentives to add rooms. As rents are also very low, the anticipation of future income is not an important factor in extension activity. However, the contribution of extensions to the housing supply is undoubtedly very worthwhile and should be encouraged by the housing finance policy. ¹he construction and building materials industries There seems to be little problem for our recent builders and recent extenders arising from the construction industry or the supply of building materials. There is, however, a problem which can be detected outside the survey and which would manifest itself if more people were intending to build. In general, there are very few capable building contractors and even fewer developers who could supply housing ahead of demand. The construction industry has no speculative elements; there is no Ghanaian equivalent of the British ‘spec builder’ constructing large numbers of houses and selling them at or near completion at prices which a household with median income can afford to buy. Of course, they are not likely to arise until the market is created by having a housing finance system to provide end-user finance in the form of mortgages. Furthermore, they are unlikely to be successful until frontend finance, the ability to acquire parcels of land for onward allocation, and other necessities of the development process are available. As one of the authors has argued elsewhere (Tipple, 1994), the scaling up of supply called for by the GSS requires new levels of assistance to be targeted to professionals in housing supply rather than to individual households intent on having one house built. ¹he regulatory framework It is difficult to build a traditional compound house and still keep within the building and planning regulations, especially when the planning officials regard the courtyard space as built up and not part of the open area required in the regulations. We have seen, however, that many recent builders have remained faithful to the compound form and that it provides very cheap accommodation favoured by the lower income sector of our sample of builders and owners. Our data add more evidence to the on-going argument that compound houses should be encouraged as an urban building form, especially as they are so inexpensive and easily built incrementally.
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Where regulations exist which inhibit housing supply without achieving a real increase in utility, safety and health among the residents or neighbours, they should be abolished. It is obvious that many regulations are regularly flouted either through inadequate development control or by bribing the inspectors. It is time for simpler forms of regulation which reflect the real conditions in which people live in Ghanaian cities and which encourage house ownership among relatively low income people. Building standards based on what is built by current housing suppliers are likely to be more valid than those based on those coming out of 1930s Britain. House inheritance as a social safety net We have seen that inherited housing is an important part of the stock and acts as a social safety net, providing the young and the old with cheap accommodation. Houses with many rooms of similar sizes and accessible from semi-private/semipublic space are easier to use as family houses than villas with internal access through other rooms. This is another reason why the government should enable the construction of compound houses and other multi-habited structures rather than discouraging them through the interpretation put on the building and planning regulations. Encourage rental housing It is likely, if not inevitable, that most urban residents will rent rooms or apartments rather than own a house in the city. The legislative environment should encourage the construction and maintenance of rented rooms and apartments. This would involve purposefully and progressively removing the vestiges of rent control and introducing true market rents. Without this measure, the shortage of accommodation represented by a 3.3 persons per room mean occupancy rate for Kumasi is unlikely to be overcome. Nor is the standard of rental accommodation likely to improve from its currently low level. CONCLUSIONS It is our conviction that policies for improving the delivery of housing in Ghana must take full account of the non-market nature of housing and land transactions. Thus, sustainable housing policies will require an approach different from that in the past and those practised in many other developing countries. There is little chance that encouraging the construction of single household villas will provide appropriate housing solutions for more than a tiny minority of urban Ghanaian households. We believe that the current informal housing supply system has many advantages especially with respect to the cost of housing provided by them. Inexpensiveness is an especially important virtue in a society where housing is not an investment. In the light of the poor past performance of the commercial formal sector, and with its products completely missing the low income group, the informal sector should be utilised as the basis for workable housing supply policies. Emphasis should be on increasing its efficiency, especially through suitable finance which is unlike current mortgage arrangements. Its characteristics must include sustainability at any level of demand (thus, it would have to be at market interest rates), ability to accept collateral which was not real estate, and lending periods of no more than a decade. In addition, the benefits of improving the performance of businesses within the informal construction sector will be important. Even though this might entail public money being used to make private businesses more
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profitable, it is likely to be more efficient than addressing householders’ ability to participate in self-help alternatives (Tipple, 1994). Traditional multi-habited houses offer much more appropriate accommodation for inheriting lineages than do villas. Many of the characteristics of the courtyard house are valuable and should be enabled in future housing. These include simplicity of construction, a relatively high density urban form, a safe environment for child care, the ability to use rooms for renting or fulfilling family obligations, and congruence with traditional inheritance practices (Amole et al., 1993) through the proliferation of similarly sized rooms and the ability to gain access to each room independently. However, the compound form has some disadvantages which make it unpopular with more affluent Ghanaians and physical planners. There is a need to study the nature and importance of these objections and to propose methods of design and use which will ameliorate or eradicate them. Even in the absence of such solutions, there are grounds to remove the illegality of compound housing by changing the practice of counting the courtyard as built-up area in terms of permitted plot ratio. This would allow the choice between compounds and other forms to be made on an equal footing and equalise their chances of obtaining finance and other benefits of full legality.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following: Ken Willis and Guy Garrod of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who were active in the housing supply study; the Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi; the British Council; and the Leverhulme Trust who financed the Housing Supply Study in Ghana (Grant no. F125X).
REFERENCES Abdullah, A. M. (1995) State housing provision in Sarawak: an examination of accessibility, habitability, sustainability and affordability. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Amole, B., Korboe, D. and Tipple, A. G. (1993) The family house in West Africa: a forgotten resource for policy makers? ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 15(4), 355—372. Bentsi-Enchill, K. (1964) Ghana ¸and ¸aw. Sweet and Maxwell, London. Brown, J. W. (1978) Increased intercommunication and epidemic disease in colonial Ashanti. In: Disease in African History, eds. G. W. Hartwig and K. D. Patterson. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Dawuni, A. A. (1980) Co-operative housing: case studies. Paper presented to the National Housing Seminar (Ghana), University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 17—22 March. Ghana, Government of (1959) ¹he Second Development Plan 1959—1964. Government Printer, Accra. Ghana, Government of (1993) National Shelter Strategy. Policy Planning and Evaluation Unit, Ministry of Works and Housing, Accra. Ghana, Government of (1996) Draft ¸and Policy. Ministry of Lands and Forestry, Accra. Gold Coast, Government of (1946) A Pamphlet Setting out the Revised Accra Rehousing Scheme. Government Printer, Accra. GSS (1995) Ghana ¸iving Standards Survey: Report on the ¹hird Round (GLSS 3), September 1991—September 1992. Ghana Statistical Service, Accra. HUDA Housing and Urban Development Associates (1990) Housing Needs Assessment Study, Final Report. Ministry of Local Government, Government of Ghana, Accra. Kom, E. (1980) Land tenure reform. Paper presented at the Seminar on ¹itle Registration, ¸and Resources Management and ¸and ºse Policy, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 3—8 August. Konadu-Agyemang, K. O. (1991) Reflections on the absence of squatter settlements in West African cities: the case of Kumasi, Ghana. ºrban Studies 28(1), 139—151. Korboe, D. T. (1993) The low-income housing system in Kumasi: an empirical examination of two neighbourhoods. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Malpezzi, S. J., Tipple, A. G. and Willis, K. G. (1990) Costs and Benefits of Rent Control: A Case Study in Kumasi, Ghana. The World Bank, Washington, DC.
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Okpala, D. C. I. (1977) The potentials and perils of public land ownership and management: a case study of the Lagos Executive Development Board (Nigeria), 1928—1972. Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ollennu, N. A. (1962) Principles of Customary ¸and ¸aw in Ghana. Sweet and Maxwell, London. Tipple, A. G. (1984) Towards a culturally acceptable housing strategy, the case of Kumasi, Ghana. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Tipple, A. G. (1985) Housing problems and fields for intervention in Ghana. African ºrban Studies 21 (Spring), 5—13. Tipple, A. G. (1994) A matter of interface: the need for a shift in targeting housing interventions. Habitat International 18(4), 1—15. Tipple, A. G., Amole, B., Korboe, D. and Onyeacholem, H. (1994) House and dwelling, family and household. ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 16(4), 429—450. Tipple, A. G., Korboe, D. and Garrod, G. (1997) Income and wealth in house ownership studies in urban Ghana. Housing Studies 12(1), 111—26. Tipple, A. G. and Owusu, S. E. (1994) Transformations in Kumasi, Ghana, as a housing supply mechanism. Preliminary Study. Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Tipple, A. G. and Willis, K. G. (1991) Tenure choice in a West African city. ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 13(1), 27—45. UNCHS — United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, (1990). The Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. UNCHS — United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, (1996). The Global Plan of Action http://www.undp.org/un/habitat/agenda/ch-4.html.
NOTES 1These data are derived from an unpublished survey by Samuel Boapeah as part of the World Bank Rent Control Study published as Malpezzi et al. (1990). 2The extension of government-built houses is common in Kumasi and a preliminary case study has been published as Tipple and Owusu (1994). 3This assumes a lifespan averaging 100 years for houses in the current stock. 4The Plan uses the words house and dwelling interchangeably although this is unhelpful in a society where it is common for many households to occupy one house (see Tipple et al., 1994 for a discussion of this semantic issue). 5A minority, but sought after, provision in compounds where a living room and a bedroom are let as a suite. 6It looks even greater when the completion of uncomplete units is related to the relatively expensive units criticized in its rhetoric. 7There is an issue here that most households who can afford these dwellings would not want to live in such a small structure, preferring, instead, a larger house which brings more status and has space to accommodate many family members. 8Information on current housing is taken from our yet unpublished research project examining housing supply in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum sponsored by the Leverhulme Foundation. It was carried out at the Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas (CARDO), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. A discussion of income and wealth issues arising in it can be found in Tipple et al. (1997). 9Though only the rich can afford new formal sector housing. 10While this is true to a greater or lesser extent in many (especially West) African countries, and on a personal level for people from many cultures in Africa and elsewhere, it is particularly valid in Ghana where the sale of a house would raise serious religio-social issues. When Ghanaians talk about the sale of land, they mean the sale of the rights to use the surface for a fixed period of time. The land itself remains community property. 11The only exceptions are those whose religious convictions cause them not to fear supernatural activity, particularly born-again Christians. 12There are no new freeholds currently being granted in Accra. 13Except in its recent performance in Kumasi where production has been increased to respectable levels.
PII: S0197-3975(98)00009-5
Housing Policy in Ghana: Towards a Supply-Oriented Future A. GRAHAM TIPPLE* Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas (CARDO), University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK DAVID KORBOE Department of Housing and Planning Research, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to review past and present housing policies in Ghana, particularly the 1993 National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993, Policy Planning and Evaluation ºnit, Ministry of ¼orks and Housing, Accra), in the context of housing supply for the low income majority. The current international policies embodied in the Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS) (UNCHS, 1990) and the Global Plan of Action of Habitat II (GPA) (UNCHS, 1996) have provided a framework within which current housing policies are to be formulated with the intention of cranking up housing supply. We suggest some characteristics of Ghanaian housing and urban society which demand different approaches. In that context, we recommend means by which current policies can be made more supply-efficient by building on strongly held beliefs and attitudes rather than through the imposition of alien market-oriented value systems. ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keywords: housing policy; finance; tradition; Ghana
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF HOUSING POLICY In the first-half of the 20th century, the colony of the Gold Coast (including Ashanti and the Northern Protectorate) had a fairly standard attitude towards housing development for the time (up to Independence in 1957). It began with an impetus to house British Civil Servants in some splendour separate from the local people. This was partly to prevent the spread of malaria, yellow fever, and other debilitating diseases to the newcomers. Planning and sanitation measures were closely intertwined but little was done to improve the housing conditions of the majority of the local population. Some improvements were made as a response to an outbreak of plague in Kumasi (Brown, 1978) and the earthquake in Accra in 1939 (Gold Coast, 1946). However, the main programmes for improvement had to wait until after the Second World War, the new emphasis on colonial development, and the need to show some gratitude to the brave lads returning from the battle fronts to their colonial homelands. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a few thousand small dwellings
* Corresponding author.
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were erected for veterans and junior civil servants. These joined the estates built following the earthquake to establish the state housing sector in the main cities. Since Independence in 1957, the Ghana government’s housing provision activity has been carried out in Tema New Town by the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and in the main cities by the State Housing Corporation (SHC) which constructed about 24,000 single household dwellings between 1957 and 1990 (Ghana, 1993). While, for example, government-built houses comprised about 20% of all the houses in Kumasi in 1988, they are so small compared to the other houses that they comprise only 7% of the rooms.1 This is after they were extended as a result of the initiatives taken by their users at no cost to the government.2 For all its small size, the state sector has taken a prominent place in government policy. The First Republican (Nkrumah) government used it as a way of intervening in population distribution through planning housing in towns where employment opportunities were planned (Ghana, 1959). Much noise and energy has been expended in establishing and promoting methods of increasing efficiency and reducing costs in supply but always the state sector has failed to meet targets and absorbed more resources and attention than its output should have merited. The main policy directions have been in the direct supply of quite a small numbers of dwellings and a number of measures to influence demand. These have included subsidies for the renting and subsequent purchase of government-built dwellings; subsidised interest rates for borrowers from the few institutions concerned with housing finance, and a very successful rent control regime starting in 1943 and only relaxed in 1987. This last reduced the rent to income ratio of the median household to only 2% of expenditure (Malpezzi et al., 1990). At the same time, state financial agencies have been encouraged to invest in so-called low-cost housing. Loans have been available to the fortunate few (typically less than 100 per year in total) from the State Insurance Corporation (SIC), the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), and the First Ghana Building Society (FGBS) but recipients have inevitably been relatively well off and in formal employment. SSNIT and SIC have also constructed estates of housing for rent as capital investments [1485 and 409, respectively, 1985 to 1990 (Ghana, 1993)], but they are unsuited to their raison d’eL tre of securing long-term financial yields while providing housing for low income households. They have been let at rents which are too high for low-income people but are too low to allow a return on the investment sufficient to maintain the capital base. Thus, the housing agencies have been selling them to tenants since 1993. Internationally, policies since the 1970s have been leading away from direct housing provision for low income households. Successive governments in Ghana have tended to adopt these policies without altering them for local circumstances. A project to introduce co-operative housing was tried in Tema during the 1970s (Dawuni, 1980) but it proved very difficult to implement and did not benefit the low income group. There has been an upgrading project in Nima along the lines devised for squatter settlements, even though Nima is not a squatter settlement and its occupant households are more frequently renters than owners and have little to gain in real terms from the project. There have been several efforts to introduce sites and services schemes but with little success and none for the low income group whose problems such schemes are designed to address in other countries. CURRENT HOUSING SUPPLY ¹he national shelter strategy The national shelter strategy (Ghana, 1993) represents the current direction of urban housing policy in Ghana. It was formulated at the Ministry of Works and
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Housing with the assistance of the United Nations. It lists six main objectives: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
improving the quality of shelter; improving the environment of human settlements; making shelter programmes more accessible to the poor; promoting private sector involvement through an enabling policy environment; encouraging rental housing; and promoting orderly growth with infrastructure in place.
The strategy admits that ‘an analysis of the 1991 Development Estimates of the Ministry of Works and Housing reveals that approximately 8 per cent of investment could be classified as going into the target groups, while approximately 50 per cent of investment went into the completion of uncompleted houses, the construction of bungalows for civil servants, the acquisition of SSNIT flats and the rehabilitation of government bungalows’. (Ghana, 1993: part II, p. 85). The consequence of this, that the poor are subsidising the rich, is not lost on the writers of the strategy. It is surely the context in which a revolution in supply policies is required. However, the strategy is firmly based in old institutions and follows lines similar to previous (ineffective) policies. While it makes policy suggestions to enable the inputs to housing, the national strategy follows earlier ill-fated government development plans in proposing annual construction and servicing targets for 1994—1997 which do not reflect the objectives very closely, especially with respect to increasing accessibility for the poor. The targets are as shown in Table 1. These plans are based on the provision, by public or private sector, of 264,000 dwellings. This figure arises from Table 2.7 in Vol. 1 of the National Shelter Strategy and includes housing extra urban households, eliminating the urban shortfall by 2010, and allowing 1% replacement per annum.3 Although this table assumes 13 persons per house (more than two households per house), the planned output shown here is mainly for quite small (single household) dwellings,4 mostly
Table 1. Housing solutions offered by the National Shelter Strategy Housing solutions
Number
Percentage Cost (C mill) Percentage
Percent units from private sector
New units to be completed Upper income 3 bedroom Middle income 2 bedroom Rental units (two rooms) Core houses Uncompleted units to be completed Total new units Existing units
39,570 105,520 52,760 39,570 26,470 263,890
12.6 33.5 16.8 12.6 8.4 83.8
712,260 844,160 105,520 79,140 131,900 1,873,430
36.6 43.4 5.4 4.1 6.8 96.3
100 90 100 50 0 79
Private upgrades Rehabilitation loans Improvement loans Total existing units Plots
15,000 3000 3000 21,000
4.8 1.0 1.0 6.7
3000 6000 6000 42,000
0.2 0.3 0.3 2.2
100 0 0 71
Developed plots Site plus communal services Site plus individual services Total plots
10,000 10,000 10,000 30,000
3.2 3.2 3.2 9.5
16,000 5,000 10,000 31,000
0.8 0.3 0.5 1.6
Total units
314,890
100
1,946,430
C1 million approximately equalled £1,000 at the time of the plan.
100
10 0 0 0.3 71
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for the middle and upper income groups, and a few rented chamber and hall units5 (c. 53,000, about 17% of the planned production). Following past development plans, it is based on increasing the proportion of houses which are single household dwellings, i.e. the type built by GREDA members in the formal sector, rather than encouraging the multihabited compounds and other house forms with many households, usually built in the informal sector. Thus, though the rhetoric of the strategy addresses the need to concentrate on lower cost houses when they are provided through government budgets, the plan figures show a dominance of upper and middle income group housing in the proposed production. Furthermore, the 10% public share (C84 billion) in providing the middle income two-bedroomed units is a considerable proportion of government spending proposed in the housing sector.6 The public sector efforts are to be achieved by actually building dwellings rather than by investing in public—private partnerships which are practised in Malaysia, for example Abdullah (1995), and are so much a part of the enabling strategy. The targets require doubling the production from SHC, etc, in the first year and making further increases in succeeding years. This also seems to reflect past plans, where such efficiency improvements were taken for granted, rather than echoing the reality in which state enterprises have continued to operate well below capacity and even further below plans. A recent housing finance scheme, officially targeted at the low-income population, has signally failed to assist them. The Home Finance Company (HFC) was incorporated in mid-1990 but applicants have to purchase their new housing from registered real-estate developers. Loans have concessionary real interest rates of only 3.5—4.5% above the inflation index. The borrowers are mainly public servants and many had institutional assistance from organisations such as the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the Ghana National Procurement Agency, and the American-owned Volta Aluminium Company. HFC is seen by its officials primarily as a viable financial enterprise; they have no delusions of it being a major lender for low-income housing activity. Policy-makers, on the other hand, have often advertised HFC as the long-awaited solution to the problems of low-income housing finance. The registered private developers (the only suppliers whose products are acceptable to the HFC) find it necessary to build for upper sectors of the market. Thus, their houses are only affordable to public corporations and individuals with very high incomes.7 It is an open secret that a sizeable proportion of such money comes from overseas employment and from dubious local and foreign sources. Thus, the subsidised interest rates, paid for by the public purse, are redistributing income from the majority poor to the fortunate few. ¹raditional and informal sector supply for the vast majority No formal sector finance or any other assistance is available for the majority who develop in any informal way; through the common disqualifiers from the formal sector which affect most housing actually occupied by the poor, particularly not having more than a traditional land lease (as land held thus cannot be used as collateral — see below), or not having planning permission. A great majority of the people in urban Ghana have been housed through small-scale private sector initiatives. Even when government housing budgets were concentrating on establishing a formal sector rental stock, a vast majority of the people were housed by their own efforts and those of the small-scale private landlords. Our recent research project examining housing supply in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum8 shows that house ownership is rarely achieved before the age of 40 and by this time family obligations are likely to be quite onerous. However, new
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builders of houses are less well-off than might be imagined given the large size of houses being built. Taking expenditure as a proxy for income, new owners in 1994 tended to have annual household incomes of about C1.5 million (£1500) or 12 times the minimum wage. Their incomes are only 25—50% higher than renters in the same houses. Thus, it cannot be said that only the rich can afford to build a new house in Ghana.9 The traditional urban housing in Ghana has always been the compound consisting of many rooms opening off a private internal courtyard. In Accra, many of these have been similar to the Yoruba compound of Nigeria with a large house at the front containing double-banked rooms opening off a hallway, and single storey wings at the sides with rooms opening off the courtyard. In Kumasi they have tended to have a single bank of rooms all round the main courtyard but may be two or three storeys high on each side. In Kumasi, 57% of houses were compounds in 1988 (Malpezzi et al., 1990). Compounds have generally been constructed by informal sector builders (those who are not registered and operate largely outside official employment and tax regulations), on plots which are the property of the owners but to which they only have traditional land rights. These plots do not necessarily correspond with official plans. Some houses are built with traditional earth technologies, but increasingly they are in cement blocks with in situ cast reinforced concrete structural elements, especially where more than one storey is to be erected. They tend not to conform with building and planning regulations in such matters as leaving set-back spaces at the edges of the plots, covering only 60% of the plot with buildings, building in materials conforming with British Standards of strength and durability, and having at least one water closet toilet and tap on each floor. Throughout the century, the great majority of the urban population have lived in compound houses and our housing supply data show that compound housing is likely to be important well into the future. In the 1990s, however, there is a trend towards villas and apartments which has begun to dominate the new supply. About half the recent additions to the housing stock have been in the form of compounds and the other half are villas; usually free-standing detached selfcontained dwellings with a mean of six rooms. Often these will start with the erection of a servants’ quarters along the rear boundary but this is as likely to be occupied by the owner or extended family members as by servants. Many remain without the main house for a decade or more as money is collected for the final (main) phase of construction. Construction tends to take years rather than months; the medians in our sample are four years for compounds and 3.5 years for villas. Renting, usually in the private sector from small-scale landlords living in the multihabited house, is and will continue to be very important in urban Ghana. In Accra, 43% of households rent their room or rooms, in Kumasi about three quarters of households rent. There is a growing number of people who occupy their rooms rent-free because they are related to the owner or are part of a lineage group who have inherited their house in common (Tipple and Willis, 1991; Amole et al., 1993). These family house occupants constitute about 48% of households in Accra (GSS, 1995) and 25% in Kumasi (Tipple and Willis, 1991) and are bound to become more common as mortality claims the ageing owners. More than half the households in each city occupy only a single room (GSS, 1995) and only owners regularly have more than one room to call their own (Tipple and Willis, 1991). Occupancy rates are very high, 3.3 persons per room in Kumasi (Malpezzi et al., 1990). The means by which these relatively low income households in Ghana manage to build such large houses appear to hinge on not fulfilling the letter of the building and planning regulations and the low prices for building achieved by informal sector builders. In addition, compounds are much cheaper than the more
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fashionable detached villas, allowing less-well-off householders to become owners. In Kumasi, compounds appear to cost about C3.4 million (£3400), or C 700,000 (£700) per room. Villas, which usually have higher standards of fittings and finishes, cost about C10 million (£10,000), or C1,700,000 (£1700) per room. Mean house cost to income ratios for recent owners of houses are lower for compounds (3.5) than villas (5.4), but neither are particularly high. Compound builders tend to have incomes 40% lower than builders of villas. The formal sector alternatives to these houses are much smaller and more expensive. For example, the highly subsidised one- and two-bedroom bungalows available from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) were priced at C5.4 million and C8.5 million (£5400 and £8500) or more than C2 million (£2000) per room. The commercial builders, whose products qualify for HFC financial assistance, were selling one-bedroom (two-roomed) dwellings at about C8 million (£8000) and two-bedroom (three-roomed) dwellings at C10—11 million (£10—11,000); more than C3 million (£3000) per room. The dwellings proposed in the National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993) are much more expensive than the buildings being constructed by our samples in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum, taking account of inflation, and are in a completely different league of cost per room. Thus, the two- and three-bedroomed dwellings intended for the middle and upper income groups were priced at C8 million and C18 million respectively in 1992; far above our private suppliers’ prices when inflation is accounted for. The lack of loan finance means that almost all house construction takes place for cash. Would-be owners gather materials over a long period before building commences. This is evident from the large piles of cement blocks stacked for many years on and close to building sites. In addition, preferences in roofing material are strongly influenced by sheets of a size which can be stored under beds! Once building starts, cash supply can be very intermittent leading to incremental building. Most villa buildings takes place in horizontal slices (all the foundations, all the walls, all the roof, etc.). Only recently have some villa builders taken to completing and occupying a few rooms at a time in the manner common with multihabited compounds and elsewhere in the world. ¹he importance of extensions Housing extensions are an important housing supply mechanism in urban Ghana. In the 1980—1988 period, for example, Malpezzi et al. (1990) found that a few new houses had been constructed but the housing stock had expanded to accommodate the growing number of people. The expansion had mainly been in extensions, often as extra rooms on the ground floor or, less frequently, the addition of another storey. Our surveys in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum suggest that many extensions are part of a very protracted incremental house building process rather than being the result of a new decision to build taken well after the completion of the house.
SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GHANAIAN HOUSING AND URBAN SOCIETY ¸ack of a market in most real property The tale of inefficiency and failure of formal housing suppliers to perform to plan and the reliance of most householders on the informal sector are not unfamiliar and could probably be told for countless countries in Africa and elsewhere. However,
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there is an added dimension to the housing scene in urban Ghana which complicates the application of internationally developed policies and projects. Land and housing in Ghana are not generally for sale.10 Outside a small governmentcontrolled sector, land is only available for occupation on leases and with titles of only surface user (usufruct). The means of land allocation and leasing conditions in Ghana are extensively documented elsewhere (for example, Bentsi-Enchill, 1964; Ollennu, 1962). It is, however, vital to our discussion to understand that land in Ghana is owned by kin-groups (abusua) which consist of those who have died, those who are alive, and those yet to be born. The material world is seen as part of a larger realm which is inhabited by ancestors who are vigilant and influential over affairs affecting the long-term wealth and wellbeing of the lineage. In this culture, anyone who acts to reduce the lineage for his/her own gain, e.g., by disposing of land, housing, or other real property, is likely to be punished by the ancestors, even to death.11 This system of land and property ownership is the basis of the loyalty and obligation system which gives traditional Ghanaian towns their particular character, especially with respect to strong social controls and very low crime rates. Efforts by the government to ‘modernise’ by reducing traditional land allocation (through Nkrumah’s land legislation, e.g., the Administration of Lands Act, 1962) and the nationalisation debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Kom, 1980), have come to nothing. Land and real property are still traditionally held and show little sign of change. Most of the land in Kumasi and the provincial towns in South and Central Ghana is held by paramount chiefs (Ollennu, 1962). The chiefs can alienate land to members of the stool (as of right) or strangers in exchange for a tribute, known as drink money. The money paid to the chief does not represent an ‘arms-length’ purchase price, it is simply a tribute to the ancestors of the land-holding lineage. Land title registration and document processing procedures are still centralised in Accra and are overlaid on the traditional allocation system. In the North, the system is similar but skins take the place of stools. For land in Accra, the owning bodies are represented by chiefs (Mantsemei), fetish priests (wulomei), quarter heads (akutseiatsemei) and family heads (HUDA (Housing and Urban Development Associates), 1990). While there are some areas where stools gained the rights to allocate land (particularly in Labadi), most quarter heads have remained in control of their land. There are also some landowning families. This rather complicated set of, often overlapping, land allocating entities has led to many very clouded titles with the subsequent delays in development, legal costs, and multiple payment for the right of use of the land. Recently, as part of the new stress on urban management, the land registration system in Accra is being overhauled as a precursor to a national land registry. In the cities, there has also been a ‘modern’ sector where land is allocated through leasehold and administered directly by the government’s Lands Commission.12 However, it is quite small and only accessible to a few very influential (and quite westernised) people. The number of freehold plots in urban areas is insignificant. For Accra, records at the Lands Commission Secretariat indicate that freeholds account for less than 0.1% of the total land area. In addition, state-controlled land is just under 13%. There is no direct link between plot size and price. So, even though the amount paid is now a notional market ‘value’, it is unlikely to be lower for a smaller plot. Plots in Ghana are large by international standards. In established settlements in Kumasi, typical plots measure between 1200 and 3500 m2 though plots of 970—1040 m2 are becoming increasingly common in less established areas where chiefs are carving out smaller, but still substantial, plots to maximise their gains. Throughout the urban areas, the combined effect of large plots and small built areas is low-density urban sprawl resulting in higher infrastructure costs and, therefore, a negative impact on prospects for servicing.
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In most developing countries, squatting has been an alternative land occupation strategy for many of the poor. In Ghana, however, it is very rare mainly due to the close watch kept on the land by local chiefs and, perhaps, a fear of flouting supernaturally underpinned laws of land occupation (Tipple, 1984; KonaduAgyemang, 1991; Korboe, 1993). ¹he need to build for more than one household The importance of lineage obligations causes most would-be owners to want a house which is much larger than their household alone would demand. Most owners are seen as benefactors by poorer members of their lineage and take their obligations to provide accommodation for others very seriously. The average owner in our survey provides accommodation for about 20 people. It is not customary for urban owner households to occupy the whole house and often rooms will be let to tenants or occupied rent-free by the households of family members. Thus, most would-be owners want relatively large houses. While current housing policy in Ghana centres on encouraging individuals to build single household bungalows with three, or at most four, habitable rooms as a single dwelling, current owners and builders tend to provide 8—10 rooms per house. The latter is an efficient way of developing the large plots and should not be replaced by single household dwellings. Ownership of houses is also closely controlled within the same religio-social system as land. We have discussed elsewhere (Amole et al., 1993) the importance of inherited (family) houses as a social safety net in urban West Africa. Although a house may be regarded as the personal property of the original owner while he or she is alive, it will be inherited by the lineage in common with a senior male (abusua panyin) as the first among equals. In many parts of Ghana, the lineage excludes a man’s own children. Although there is legislation to allow close relatives who are not in the deceased’s lineage (e.g. a man’s children in Asante) to inherit the house when the owner dies, litigation by the traditional heirs (brothers and nephews) tends to favour lineage claims. It is quite common to find owners in their fifties and sixties building houses large enough for many households when they might be expected to want just a small dwelling for their retirement years. Similarly, owners who reach advanced age are quite likely to extend their houses even though their own requirements are already well served. The inheritance of a house by the members of an abusua in common, in a culture where its sale is unconscionable, encourages structures which are easily occupied by several loosely linked households. These would ideally have many similar sized rooms each with independent access from semi-public space. Thus, the compound is an ideal form for inherited housing. Mindful of the inevitability of inheritance, policy makers should realise that the owners and occupants of a typical house will not be a single household but rather members of an abusua. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE HOUSING SUPPLY POLICY Currently, national housing strategies in developing countries are increasingly based around the Global Strategy for Shelter (UNCHS, 1990) and the policy directions now embodied in the Global Plan of Action from Habitat II (UNCHS, 1996). The main points arising from these and affecting policy in Ghana are the adoption of enabling shelter strategies and the need for a realistic sector wide strategy which is appropriate to local norms and directed at scaling up supply to a level adequate to meet demand. It is directly in the spirit of both the Global Strategy for Shelter and the Global Plan of Action to shift government policy interventions from any notion to provide
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complete housing or to interfere with the final price of housing through subsidies or rent controls. Any realistic estimate of past performance gives little confidence to agencies such as SHC13 and SSNIT as being able to become major providers. Instead, government efforts and housing budgets should be aimed at enabling the input markets to work effectively, to ensure that the construction industry is encouraged at all levels, and to provide an appropriate and efficient regulatory system to maximise output at affordable prices. We would make the following suggestions for government interventions. Availability of land The traditional system has much to commend it in that it is locally controlled, relatively inexpensive to operate, and potentially equitable in its allocation practices (Okpala, 1977; Tipple, 1984). In addition, and very importantly, the control of land by traditional communities through their chiefs contributes to the security, welfare and loyalty systems of the majority of the people (Tipple, 1985; Korboe, 1993). The main problem for land allocation currently is the clouded nature of many titles and the lack of bankable titles over traditionally allocated land. The former should be largely resolved when the current land registration exercise is complete, the latter would require sensitive extending of the security of the title without taking away the allodial right to the land vested in the community. We recognise that the non-marketability of land is important to the social cohesion of Ghana’s urban people. Thus, the outright ownership required in raising collateral on land could damage the community’s long-term ability to regain the allodial rights to land alienated to an unsuccessful builder and then forfeited to a loaning agency. However, it is unlikely that a finance system that is so sorely needed will develop without forms of collateral on fixed property acceptable to both the traditionalists in the community and to formal financial agencies. In the National Shelter Strategy (Ghana, 1993), the need for foreclosure laws and procedures are articulated. In developing these, however, it is essential that market systems for land transactions, and the ability of loaning agencies to sell land rights to the highest bidder following a foreclosure, are not imposed on the people while beliefs in the sacral nature of land holding are generally held. The exact relationship between traditional beliefs and the acceptance of a market in land rights is a subject on which the current Draft Land Policy (Ghana, 1996) is silent but one on which research should be undertaken jointly by specialists in religion and land. Availability of finance The most important mechanism for improving housing supply is undoubtedly a source of finance. It is the lack of finance which mostly impedes the rapid completion of houses, and which delays their start until late in a person’s life. The ability to borrow over a long period for house construction and extension is undoubtedly a felt need among suppliers and potential suppliers of housing in Ghana. Finance for new house construction The vast majority of prospective owner-builders must still use the cash in their wallets, so to speak, for buying leases on land and paying material suppliers, artisans and service agencies. In our housing supply research, the median recentbuilder household has an income (in 1993 prices) of under C2 million (£2000) per annum and is building five to ten rooms costing about C6 million (£6000). Thus, loans of C3—8 million (£3—8000) at 1993 prices would suffice to help financing the great majority of houses found in our survey. There would appear to be no reason
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for reducing interest rates below those prevailing in the banking market as the house cost to income ratio is only about three so does not constitute exceptional levels of housing investment. There also appears to be no reason to make them repayable over the usual 25 years as any spreading of the financing load (even for as little as five years) would be an improvement for current builders relying on cash. It may, thus, be more appropriate to have five to ten year repayment periods. The loans should be released in stages for the purchase of the land lease, and financing the various stages of building in order to reduce the debt burden to a minimum during the building process. The issue of securing the loan on the land and then the buildings and the need for some fundamental changes in the way land is regarded arises again here. Once again, we would reiterate that the need for financial security must be matched with maintaining the integrity of community control of land. Finance for extensions It is probable that financial assistance for extensions, in the form of market rate loans of C1 to 2 million, would assist owners wishing to extend. Currently, almost no finance is targeted at house extenders and there are no tax or other financial incentives to add rooms. As rents are also very low, the anticipation of future income is not an important factor in extension activity. However, the contribution of extensions to the housing supply is undoubtedly very worthwhile and should be encouraged by the housing finance policy. ¹he construction and building materials industries There seems to be little problem for our recent builders and recent extenders arising from the construction industry or the supply of building materials. There is, however, a problem which can be detected outside the survey and which would manifest itself if more people were intending to build. In general, there are very few capable building contractors and even fewer developers who could supply housing ahead of demand. The construction industry has no speculative elements; there is no Ghanaian equivalent of the British ‘spec builder’ constructing large numbers of houses and selling them at or near completion at prices which a household with median income can afford to buy. Of course, they are not likely to arise until the market is created by having a housing finance system to provide end-user finance in the form of mortgages. Furthermore, they are unlikely to be successful until frontend finance, the ability to acquire parcels of land for onward allocation, and other necessities of the development process are available. As one of the authors has argued elsewhere (Tipple, 1994), the scaling up of supply called for by the GSS requires new levels of assistance to be targeted to professionals in housing supply rather than to individual households intent on having one house built. ¹he regulatory framework It is difficult to build a traditional compound house and still keep within the building and planning regulations, especially when the planning officials regard the courtyard space as built up and not part of the open area required in the regulations. We have seen, however, that many recent builders have remained faithful to the compound form and that it provides very cheap accommodation favoured by the lower income sector of our sample of builders and owners. Our data add more evidence to the on-going argument that compound houses should be encouraged as an urban building form, especially as they are so inexpensive and easily built incrementally.
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Where regulations exist which inhibit housing supply without achieving a real increase in utility, safety and health among the residents or neighbours, they should be abolished. It is obvious that many regulations are regularly flouted either through inadequate development control or by bribing the inspectors. It is time for simpler forms of regulation which reflect the real conditions in which people live in Ghanaian cities and which encourage house ownership among relatively low income people. Building standards based on what is built by current housing suppliers are likely to be more valid than those based on those coming out of 1930s Britain. House inheritance as a social safety net We have seen that inherited housing is an important part of the stock and acts as a social safety net, providing the young and the old with cheap accommodation. Houses with many rooms of similar sizes and accessible from semi-private/semipublic space are easier to use as family houses than villas with internal access through other rooms. This is another reason why the government should enable the construction of compound houses and other multi-habited structures rather than discouraging them through the interpretation put on the building and planning regulations. Encourage rental housing It is likely, if not inevitable, that most urban residents will rent rooms or apartments rather than own a house in the city. The legislative environment should encourage the construction and maintenance of rented rooms and apartments. This would involve purposefully and progressively removing the vestiges of rent control and introducing true market rents. Without this measure, the shortage of accommodation represented by a 3.3 persons per room mean occupancy rate for Kumasi is unlikely to be overcome. Nor is the standard of rental accommodation likely to improve from its currently low level. CONCLUSIONS It is our conviction that policies for improving the delivery of housing in Ghana must take full account of the non-market nature of housing and land transactions. Thus, sustainable housing policies will require an approach different from that in the past and those practised in many other developing countries. There is little chance that encouraging the construction of single household villas will provide appropriate housing solutions for more than a tiny minority of urban Ghanaian households. We believe that the current informal housing supply system has many advantages especially with respect to the cost of housing provided by them. Inexpensiveness is an especially important virtue in a society where housing is not an investment. In the light of the poor past performance of the commercial formal sector, and with its products completely missing the low income group, the informal sector should be utilised as the basis for workable housing supply policies. Emphasis should be on increasing its efficiency, especially through suitable finance which is unlike current mortgage arrangements. Its characteristics must include sustainability at any level of demand (thus, it would have to be at market interest rates), ability to accept collateral which was not real estate, and lending periods of no more than a decade. In addition, the benefits of improving the performance of businesses within the informal construction sector will be important. Even though this might entail public money being used to make private businesses more
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profitable, it is likely to be more efficient than addressing householders’ ability to participate in self-help alternatives (Tipple, 1994). Traditional multi-habited houses offer much more appropriate accommodation for inheriting lineages than do villas. Many of the characteristics of the courtyard house are valuable and should be enabled in future housing. These include simplicity of construction, a relatively high density urban form, a safe environment for child care, the ability to use rooms for renting or fulfilling family obligations, and congruence with traditional inheritance practices (Amole et al., 1993) through the proliferation of similarly sized rooms and the ability to gain access to each room independently. However, the compound form has some disadvantages which make it unpopular with more affluent Ghanaians and physical planners. There is a need to study the nature and importance of these objections and to propose methods of design and use which will ameliorate or eradicate them. Even in the absence of such solutions, there are grounds to remove the illegality of compound housing by changing the practice of counting the courtyard as built-up area in terms of permitted plot ratio. This would allow the choice between compounds and other forms to be made on an equal footing and equalise their chances of obtaining finance and other benefits of full legality.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following: Ken Willis and Guy Garrod of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who were active in the housing supply study; the Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi; the British Council; and the Leverhulme Trust who financed the Housing Supply Study in Ghana (Grant no. F125X).
REFERENCES Abdullah, A. M. (1995) State housing provision in Sarawak: an examination of accessibility, habitability, sustainability and affordability. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Amole, B., Korboe, D. and Tipple, A. G. (1993) The family house in West Africa: a forgotten resource for policy makers? ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 15(4), 355—372. Bentsi-Enchill, K. (1964) Ghana ¸and ¸aw. Sweet and Maxwell, London. Brown, J. W. (1978) Increased intercommunication and epidemic disease in colonial Ashanti. In: Disease in African History, eds. G. W. Hartwig and K. D. Patterson. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Dawuni, A. A. (1980) Co-operative housing: case studies. Paper presented to the National Housing Seminar (Ghana), University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 17—22 March. Ghana, Government of (1959) ¹he Second Development Plan 1959—1964. Government Printer, Accra. Ghana, Government of (1993) National Shelter Strategy. Policy Planning and Evaluation Unit, Ministry of Works and Housing, Accra. Ghana, Government of (1996) Draft ¸and Policy. Ministry of Lands and Forestry, Accra. Gold Coast, Government of (1946) A Pamphlet Setting out the Revised Accra Rehousing Scheme. Government Printer, Accra. GSS (1995) Ghana ¸iving Standards Survey: Report on the ¹hird Round (GLSS 3), September 1991—September 1992. Ghana Statistical Service, Accra. HUDA Housing and Urban Development Associates (1990) Housing Needs Assessment Study, Final Report. Ministry of Local Government, Government of Ghana, Accra. Kom, E. (1980) Land tenure reform. Paper presented at the Seminar on ¹itle Registration, ¸and Resources Management and ¸and ºse Policy, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 3—8 August. Konadu-Agyemang, K. O. (1991) Reflections on the absence of squatter settlements in West African cities: the case of Kumasi, Ghana. ºrban Studies 28(1), 139—151. Korboe, D. T. (1993) The low-income housing system in Kumasi: an empirical examination of two neighbourhoods. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Malpezzi, S. J., Tipple, A. G. and Willis, K. G. (1990) Costs and Benefits of Rent Control: A Case Study in Kumasi, Ghana. The World Bank, Washington, DC.
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Okpala, D. C. I. (1977) The potentials and perils of public land ownership and management: a case study of the Lagos Executive Development Board (Nigeria), 1928—1972. Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ollennu, N. A. (1962) Principles of Customary ¸and ¸aw in Ghana. Sweet and Maxwell, London. Tipple, A. G. (1984) Towards a culturally acceptable housing strategy, the case of Kumasi, Ghana. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Tipple, A. G. (1985) Housing problems and fields for intervention in Ghana. African ºrban Studies 21 (Spring), 5—13. Tipple, A. G. (1994) A matter of interface: the need for a shift in targeting housing interventions. Habitat International 18(4), 1—15. Tipple, A. G., Amole, B., Korboe, D. and Onyeacholem, H. (1994) House and dwelling, family and household. ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 16(4), 429—450. Tipple, A. G., Korboe, D. and Garrod, G. (1997) Income and wealth in house ownership studies in urban Ghana. Housing Studies 12(1), 111—26. Tipple, A. G. and Owusu, S. E. (1994) Transformations in Kumasi, Ghana, as a housing supply mechanism. Preliminary Study. Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Tipple, A. G. and Willis, K. G. (1991) Tenure choice in a West African city. ¹hird ¼orld Planning Review 13(1), 27—45. UNCHS — United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, (1990). The Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. UNCHS — United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, (1996). The Global Plan of Action http://www.undp.org/un/habitat/agenda/ch-4.html.
NOTES 1These data are derived from an unpublished survey by Samuel Boapeah as part of the World Bank Rent Control Study published as Malpezzi et al. (1990). 2The extension of government-built houses is common in Kumasi and a preliminary case study has been published as Tipple and Owusu (1994). 3This assumes a lifespan averaging 100 years for houses in the current stock. 4The Plan uses the words house and dwelling interchangeably although this is unhelpful in a society where it is common for many households to occupy one house (see Tipple et al., 1994 for a discussion of this semantic issue). 5A minority, but sought after, provision in compounds where a living room and a bedroom are let as a suite. 6It looks even greater when the completion of uncomplete units is related to the relatively expensive units criticized in its rhetoric. 7There is an issue here that most households who can afford these dwellings would not want to live in such a small structure, preferring, instead, a larger house which brings more status and has space to accommodate many family members. 8Information on current housing is taken from our yet unpublished research project examining housing supply in Accra, Kumasi and Berekum sponsored by the Leverhulme Foundation. It was carried out at the Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas (CARDO), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. A discussion of income and wealth issues arising in it can be found in Tipple et al. (1997). 9Though only the rich can afford new formal sector housing. 10While this is true to a greater or lesser extent in many (especially West) African countries, and on a personal level for people from many cultures in Africa and elsewhere, it is particularly valid in Ghana where the sale of a house would raise serious religio-social issues. When Ghanaians talk about the sale of land, they mean the sale of the rights to use the surface for a fixed period of time. The land itself remains community property. 11The only exceptions are those whose religious convictions cause them not to fear supernatural activity, particularly born-again Christians. 12There are no new freeholds currently being granted in Accra. 13Except in its recent performance in Kumasi where production has been increased to respectable levels.