Nigeria is home to the most homeless people in the world; the World Population Review confirms that almost 24 million Nigerians do not have access to a proper dwelling with basic services. This is largely caused by a unique combination of rapid population growth, rural-urban migration, and accelerated natural gentrification.
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, accounts for the biggest gap in the country’s homeless population. A megacity with a population of more than 23.3 million people, which increases at an average rate of 3.2 percent each year, has over 70 percent of its inhabitants living in informal settlements and shanty residences.
Lagos’ homelessness crisis is particularly exacerbated by the forced evictions of residents by the Lagos State authorities, who are quick to dislodge poor residents in favor of high-value property development projects. According to Amnesty International, more than 50,000 Lagosians have been ejected from their homes in a violent campaign by the Lagos State government. Between November 2016 and April 2017 alone, over 30,000 people were thrown out by the Lagos State government from the Otodo-Gbame and Ilubirin settlements in defiance of court orders and without prior consultation, adequate compensation, or alternative housing initiatives.
Today, it is estimated that there is a 5 million housing deficit in Lagos, representing 31 percent of Nigeria’s total housing deficit. Indeed, slums and squalid settlements have more than doubled in Lagos from 42 in 1985 to over 100 as at January 2010 as a result of the city’s housing shortage.
Three poignant solutions can be put forth to address the housing deficit in Lagos and democratise home ownership, which will address the city’s homelessness crisis: creating an affordable social housing system, implementing an urban planning system, and improving the city’s general standard of living through social inclusion.
We will examine these solutions in detail:
Creating an Affordable Social Housing System:
Lagos requires the development of 500,000 housing units annually over a ten-year period to bridge the prevalent housing deficit. However, the combined efforts of the state’s housing agencies have only yielded less than 1,000 housing units per annum.
To close the Lagos housing deficit through affordable and qualitative housing systems, the Lagos municipal administration will have to create an affordable housing plan that takes into consideration the state’s retinue of urban poor, who constitute more than 91 percent of its teeming population.
To design a mass-based affordable housing system, Lagos can look to the city of Vienna, Italy. Since the 1920s, Vienna has solved the city’s affordable housing crises by building state-owned, low-rent apartment units. Today, Vienna’s abundance of public housing units have kept private-sector housing rents low.
The homelessness crisis in the city can be solved through a cross-cutting public sector-led social housing scheme.
Improving the City’s General Standard of Living Through Social Inclusion
In 2021, the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects reported that about 66 percent of Lagosians live in slums and squalid settlements. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHS) defines a slum as a wide range of low-income settlements with poor human living conditions.
The Lagos state government will regularize the land rights system in order to enhance social and housing inclusion and reduce the large number of slum dwellers in the state. Additionally, Lagos will have to mitigate the environmental hazards of slums by providing incentives for community management, improving access to healthcare and education, and enhancing citizen livelihoods through vocational training and the provision of micro-financial credits.
Implementing an Urban Planning System
Effective urban planning helps to reduce overcrowding and pollution. It also ensures that crucial urban infrastructure and transportation systems are implemented while the requisite municipal layout and density are implemented. Poor urban planning often leads to inadequate housing options.
For Lagos, there is a dearth of a sustainable urban planning system, thereby leading to a mass housing deficit. Lagos residents continue to struggle with the government’s arbitrary planning systems, as seen in the destruction of the city’s informal settlements over the course of the development of the city’s high-end projects like the Eko Atlantic City.
To reduce the city’s housing deficit, Lagos will have to make a plan that benefits the city’s populace. Urban planning measures that reduce the city’s housing deficit by taking into cognisance population growth, zoning, geographic mapping and analysis, transportation patterns, and land use impacts will have to be implemented.
Conclusion
Housing remains an important issue for national economic development. Apart from the importance of providing shelter and raising the quality of life, housing also helps to improve overall socio-economic development through the generation of employment, the promotion of industries, and the creation of conditions that remain supportive to the achievement of social objectives like health and sanitation.
To solve Lagos’ homelessness crisis, the city will have to combine a host of measures. Yet, the solutions adduced above remain the primary ways to begin.
*Doyin Olagunju is a legal practitioner. He is a fellow of the Ominira Initiative for Economic Advancement.
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