Housing problems can be addressed with local solutions – building experts

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Housing problems can be addressed with local solutions – building experts

Building experts have said the approach to address the housing problems in the country should be focused on taking advantage of the local materials available in the country for building and avoid the importation.

According to Broadcast Journalist and Research Assistant at Institute of African Studies – University of Ghana, Abdul Karim Ibrahim, and Consultant Architech, Yaw Aboagye Boadi, most countries have depended on the resources available to them in building houses in other to avoid high cost of imports and other charges that end up affecting the price of the material.

“In the Northern Region, for example, they use red clay to build houses. In many other places it is similar. But when we do not tailor our problem and address them with local solutions and have to fall on imports all the time, then clearly, the pricing is going to scale up,” Mr. Ibrahim noted.

They made these contributions on the Home Owners show on Metro Television on the topic: ‘High Cost of Houses in Ghana, What Has Accounted for it’.

Mr. Boadi indicated that a lot of house owners or builders have the taste for foreign finishing designs on their buildings which would be a problem when it comes to the use of local materials; but he stressed that with the high housing deficit situation, the country has no option than to accept the local materials.

He said government must tighten policies, which will further promote these local materials and go a long way to address the high cost of houses, while dealing with the housing deficit in the country.

Mr. Boadi advised that in order for government to reduce the housing deficit in the country, it should focus on taking off taxes on the building materials in order to help most Ghanaians build their houses; then after, it can think of taking property tax.

“If materials are being subsidised for everybody to get them and afterward, we have a Property Tax, I think that will be more productive because you will get a lot of people building, and it will cut down the deficit,” he said.

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