Recognising the barriers to securing affordable housing through the land use planning system in Sub-Saharan Africa: A perspective from Ghana

Abstract

Housing low-income households is a daunting task for policy makers across the Global South, and especially for those in Africa where past attempts to deliver State-funded affordable housing projects yielded minimal results. Presenting Ghana as a case study, the purpose of this article is to consider the rationale for and barriers to securing affordable housing through the planning system, situated within an African context. The key factors that would inhibit effective policy implementation include, on the one hand, a lack of central government commitment, weak enforcement of planning regulations and low capacity of local planning authorities, and, on the other hand, the dominance of customary land ownership and the informal nature of housing delivery. That notwithstanding, undertaking a mapping exercise of large-scale formal residential developments built across Greater Accra in recent years, the article suggests that there is an opportunity cost in not attempting to extract some form of economic rent from the private sector. By having an already established nationalised development rights system alongside a rising formal real estate market, there is in effect scope for introducing planning obligations in the longer term. Whilst by necessity, it takes time to fully establish and enforce this form of land value capture legislation; nonetheless, if the principles can be established, transferable lessons exist across Africa and the Global South.

Affordable Housing Provision in Informal Settlements through Land Value Capture and Inclusionary Housing

“…LVC is seen as an efficient and equitable tool because those who did not contribute to the increased land values do not retain all the financial benefits [67]. Kenya, just like the other Sub-Saharan African countries, faces enormous challenges in providing adequate affordable housing for the increasing numbers of the urban poor, and hence cannot afford to let go the opportunity to apply LVC [68].…”

“…In designing a working LVC model for affordable housing provision, it is important to understand key requirements for successful implementation of LVC. Agyemang and Morrison [68] identified the key factors required for effective delivery of affordable housing through land value capture. These are summarized and emphasized in Table 1 below.…”

Informal urbanisation and clientelism: Measuring the global relationship

“…An informal settlement that lacks a regular layout, that is, an ‘atomistic’ settlement, may indeed result from clientelism, or may foster clientelism after it forms. Similarly, clientelism may be involved in the provision of land or services to what the Atlas describes as ‘formal subdivisions’ (Agyemang and Morrison, 2018), or in the allocation of public housing to beneficiaries (Levenson, 2017). However, atomistic informal settlements, formal subdivisions and housing projects could also arise in the absence of clientelism, whereas the discussion above suggests that informal subdivisions are particularly likely to be linked with clientelism.…”

“…While clientelism may be involved in the provision of land and services in middle-class neighbourhoods (Agyemang and Morrison, 2018) or the allocation of units of public housing (Levenson, 2017), scholars of clientelism in cities have mostly focused on the role that it plays in poor, informal urban settlements, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Relevant studies from the last two decades include several in South Asia (e.g.…”

Re-directing developers: New models of rental housing development to re-shape the post-apartheid city?

“…In many different contexts, there exists the potential through negotiation, contestation and state power to bring forward benefit to actors who are not the developer: whether this is for occupiers, public benefit, private appropriation by public actors, or redistribution of property gains for political interests (Shatkin, 2017; Weber, 2015). Common models for extracting public benefit are land or development rights auctions, property and land tax-based systems, and ‘planning gain’ type arrangements (Agyemang and Morrison, 2017; Carmona, 2014; Haila, 2015; Weber, 2015). There is also a nascent interest, particularly among policy analysts (CAHF, 2017; World Bank, 2018), in whether land value capture and financialised forms of development might be able to deliver built environment outcomes which meet public interest requirements, such as low-income housing (Berrisford et al., 2018; Beswick and Penny, 2018; Fainstein, 2016).…”