Challenges of Accessing Affordable Housing by Low-Income Civil Servants in Abuja, Nigeria.

Abstract

The influx of civil servants into Abuja the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria has made housing a major challenge for the civil servants in FCT. Government was not fully prepared to combat the effect of such growth in population in the area of housing. Thus, accessing affordable housing for the teeming population, particularly the low income civil servants has been a major challenge in Abuja. This study presents a part of a larger research work which is on-going that aims at examining affordability and accessibility of the housing for low-income civil residents in the FCT, Abuja. At present, this study used a comprehensive literature to identify various challenges confronting the low-income civil servants in accessing affordable housing in Abuja. The study revealed that the low-income civil servants resident in Abuja could not access decent housing due to the unchec ked population growth, negligence in the area of sustainability, lack of appropriate pricing mechanism, unproductive government regulations/policies on housing, poor procurement method, land acquisition problem and funding/payment constraint, which incredibly has a resultant effect on their performance and productivity. Based on these findings, the study concluded by recommending that government should intensifies effort on provision/delivery of sustainable affordable housing, adopt a workable pricing mechanism that can address the needs of this class of civil servants, simplify the procurement method by adopting E-procurement, allocate lands to low-income civil servants and channelled the deduction from source to their Pay point/National Housing Fund, and lastly government should adopt own a house with your rent approach in combating funding/payment challenges.