EVEN though the United Nations Charter describes housing as a fundamental human right to which each inhabitant is entitled, the level to which the crisis of housing scarcity of any type has degenerated in Nigerian cities has made the problem nothing short of a national emergency.Night time observations may not readily reveal the epidemic of homelessness, but the double-digit average room occupancy rates that relevant government officials have confirmed in cities like Lagos is sufficient indication of the urgent need for an appropriately scaled response.The persistent hue and cry in media and various talk-shops about what ought to be done about the debacle have only succeeded in instigating the production of largely unaffordable homes of no more than 200 units each in a sparing number of estates. These efforts have conspicuously failed to impact adequately on the shortage more so in the light of the pressure the relentless in-migration of rural folks into cities in search of sustainable livelihoods - is putting on the existing stock.What we are facing in these circumstances is the classic case of double jeopardy where new houses, for rent or sale, are largely unaffordable to the vast majority of urban denizens. Whereupon the desperate multitudes in need of homes are left with no choice but to move into overcrowded slums where the increasing congestion increases the likelihood of an epidemic outbreak, like the recent outbreak of Lassa fever, after a twenty year hiatus. Of course such an outbreak will not discriminate on the basis of the income bracket the victims it will infect.The prevailing public discourse about this persistent inability to achieve large-scale production of housing units has clearly identified three issues as the principle culprits for the poor response to home-building in urban Nigeria. These are the scarcity and affordability of mortgages for home-ownership, the availability of resources and cost of funds where available, to invest in home building and finally the high cost of constructing basic two or three-rooms homes for the low-income category.These notwithstanding, there are other matters such as design practices that persist among building professionals that contribute inevitably to this high cost of building popular housing on a large scale for the less fortunate.These avoidable but seemingly ingrained practices and further explains why their elimination will not only simplify but also reduce building costs cumulatively and thus expand the level of affordability to those most in need.Such practices are: it has become commonplace to see a block of homes with no more than eight flats having two staircases, one serving as the main means of access to every floor level, the other usually at the back of the building used for service purposes to the homes on every level. This is a luxury we can ill-afford if we are trying to minimise the unit cost of homes, more so when a single staircase can easily make up to nine per cent of the total cost of constructing a residential block. It is only necessary to ensure that the access to/exit from every housing unit is no more than thirty metres from the staircase provided - on every level.Furthermore, floor-to-floor heights of residences locally are usually three metres, movement between which is via 20 steps each 15 centimeters high, distributed equally between two flights of stairs sharing an intermediate landing. If the highest permissible (rise) height of each step of 182 millimetres or a value close to that is used instead, fewer steps will be required to move between floors ' with corresponding decrease of the depth (thread) of each step.Consequently, the run of each flight of steps will be shorter leading to a significant savings in the quantity of concrete used to construct the stairs. Besides reducing floor-to-floor height or headroom by as much as 400 millimetres will not negate building codes, compromise safety, or detract from the use and enjoyment of domestic spaces.A large number of the residential tenements we earlier described have narrow balconies running the entire width of the building, around three sides, or in not a few cases around the entire building on every floor. Peculiar to most Nigeria cities, perhaps these balconies are intended to be cosmetic. In terms of functionality however, their narrow width (no more than four feet) means that they invariably serve nothing more than such purposes as limited circulation, drying laundry, storage of electricity generation plants and domestic water reserves in drums.Balconies, when properly designed to be deep enough, can serve the very useful purpose of a semi-outdoor space for family recreation and relaxation especially at levels higher than ground level. Our hot and humid climate makes balconies desirable when indoor spaces become hot and uncomfortable due to high external temperatures thereby compelling occupants to seek the breezy succor of balconies. Not to talk about the view. But then again the use of any type of balconies whatsoever becomes a dispensable and indulgence in the production of low-cost homes more so when large room windows can equally mitigate the discomfort of indoor heat. They simply add unnecessary costs to construction.We appear to have come to expect that every home irrespective of the economic level of the household must contain a dining space. With every square metre of floor area costing about N30, 000 to construct nowadays, a dining space in a low- or even middle-income household that will be used briefly no more than four times daily becomes an indefensible indulgence. In none of the houses in the working-class terraces and the 'Council Flats' estates of Britain, for instance, from where we borrowed the idea of dining room is such a space provided for. A six-seat dining table in one corner of a parlor should suffice. If we must achieve mass produced low-cost homes in the midst of so many other formidable challenges, we need to jettison this practice to simply reduce costs.In the bathrooms of flats that commonly dot urban residential neighbourhoods, we invariably find the ubiquitous bathtub, a very expensive piece of plumbing fitting. Because pipe-borne water is not readily available, occupants of such flats rarely use a bathtub that requires at least fifteen gallons of water for a bath, the way it is intended. Users simply stand up in the tub (a practice that is not safe since the user is prone to slip if the tub is greasy) and use it as they would a shower tray to take a bath. In some cases, tubs are used to store water. Moreover, because of their size, they make the area of bathrooms unnecessarily large when in some cases half as much floor area is enough for the bathroom if the much smaller shower tray (a much cheaper option also) substitutes the tub.The tray is in fact more appropriate because the perennial inadequacy of water supply to Nigerian cities compels the expediency of rationing. Instead of one person in a tub, fifteen gallons can be rationed to serve up to five people in a typical urban household taking their baths in a shower. Moreover, when a tub is fitted, a bathroom can only be used by one grownup at a time unlike the option of a shower tray when the bathroom can be partitioned so that two persons can simultaneously use the water closet and the shower. We can thus see compelling reasons beyond savings why we should abandon use of the redundant bathtub in our bathrooms in our present quest to multiply the supply of badly needed low-cost homes.We normally classify homes according to the number of bedrooms each living unit contains, calling them one bedroom, two bedrooms, etcetera as the case may be.
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