Liveability of Public Housing in Nigeria: a Study of Residents’ Satisfaction in Some Selected Public Housing Estates in Niger State

Abstract

Housing is one of the basic human needs and it is made up of a residential environment comprising the physical structure for shelter, all necessary services, facilities, and equipment including devices needed/desired for the physical and mental health as well as social wellbeing of the residents. Liveability in public housing takes into account the composition of the many qualities that make it a place where people want to live. This study aims at assessing the liveability of housing estates through an evaluation of the residential satisfaction of the public housing environments in the study area. Multi-stage cluster sampling was first employed to select the study locations while random sampling and systematic random sampling techniques were used in the selection of housing estates and units respectively. The main instrument used for data collection was Questionnaire of which a total of 910 copies made up of questions on 74 liveability variables drawn from literature were administered out of which 797 were returned. The socio-economic characteristics of residents was computed using frequencies and percentages while satisfaction rating of variables with the aid of SPSS was computed to determine the users’ evaluation of liveability elements of the environment. The analysis indicated that the housing units were altered from the original design as 73% of the residents have done one change or the other. Also, the lowest dissatisfaction of 2.49 was expressed on the housing estate spatial level while other spatial levels of housing unit (2.88) and housing estate neighbourhood (2.72) were slightly above the 2.5 threshold. The design or upgrade of the housing estates therefore, requires greater attention on the components of Public facilities and Security, Management, Land use & Relationship in housing estates. The research will help public housing providers to understand the occupants’ experience & evaluation thus contributing to achieving liveable housing estates.