It is also important for every homebuilding project to take place on a large scale preferably in excess of 300 units at a time. The economies of scale resulting there from will dramatically depress costs unlike our present circumstances where housing developments of no more than 100 units per project dot our urban landscape, according to GEORGE WILLIAMS, an architect and Principal, Akivisions Design Team.ALTHOUGH the United Nations Charter classifies shelter as a fundamental human right, local authorities have refused to acknowledge the national emergency that the pervasive crisis of shelter inadequacy in cities has become. They have thus refused to make housing provision a pressing national priority.There is too little on ground to sustain any realistic expectations about the illustrious aspirations encapsulated by the recently released new National Housing Policy of 2012. However the heated and passionate national dialogue that the crisis has engendered has uncovered some fundamental challenges one of which, cost of residential construction, we wish to address here.Over the years, construction costs have remained high due to the relentless inflationary pressure on the building materials market. A careful analysis of the reliable monthly price survey covering a wide variety of building materials that The Guardian Newspapers has been publishing easily reveals the severity of this trend. Even if homebuilding professionals were to specify alternative materials of lower quality such as wooden framed louvre windows, timber flush doors, Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) floor tile finishes etcetera, experience has shown that the resultant savings are not very promising.At the current cost of construction of roughly 30,000 Naira per square metre of suspended floor area, a modest 60 square metres one-bedroom flat will cost N1.8 million to construct only. This of course excludes other items such as land, power and water supply, sewage disposal etcetera. By the time these other indispensable items are factored into the eventual overall cost, the average cost of such a unit would have exceeded N3million.One-bedroom flats may not be the most sought after type of accommodation but this kind of associated cost automatically excludes a large section of households in dire need of accommodation. Even if bumper mortgages at liberal interest rates and tenor were to be suddenly available, the fraction of the low average disposable incomes of such households that the monthly loan repayments will capture - will simply be unaffordable to these households. Despite the endless talk of the potential viability of urban housing investment, this unfortunate issue is singularly a great disincentive to mass housing delivery.But why is the unit cost of constructing apartments common locally so high' Cement, a material that constitutes at least 50 percent of all the materials input into the home building process in Nigeria is largely to blame. Cement is used in the concrete frame of multi-storey buildings, to make sand-crete blocks for wall infill, for cement plaster finishes, and cement/sand screed floor finishes - in many domestic buildings. Consequently, the cost of cement is an important determinant of the unit cost of construction. Just now, the cement conglomerate, Lafarge WAPCO sells the cheapest cement at N1,500 per 50 kilogram bag ex-factory. The price of the same size of cement is higher from its major rival Dangote Cement. Neither price compares favourably with the international market price of no more than 800.00 Naira for the same size of cement.The ready-made excuse for these indefensible prices is that demand far exceeds supply, even though several importers have long been receiving government issued licenses to import cement to reduce the shortfall. And to supply reasonably priced cement to the construction industry. Ironically some of the beneficiaries of import licenses also happen to be local manufacturers. Just this year, both major cement manufacturers have commissioned impressive new ultra modern cement factories with enormous installed capacities that will progressively increase supply of cement to the market till they reach full capacity. Dangote Cement has two new plants at Ibeshe in Ogun State and Obajana in Kogi State whereas Lafarge Wapco has one at Lakatabu in Ogun State.Both manufacturers predict that when fully operational by the end of this year their new plants will in conjunction with all the other operating cement plants in the country be able to satisfy the demand of the entire construction industry. Unfortunately, contrary to the laws of demand and supply, the increasing supply of cement has not depressed the price to or below the international price of cement. Except we presume that demand is rising as fast as supply, which is unlikely in such a depressed economy just now!Although the international press has branded him 'King of Cement', being on the verge of superseding Lafarge as the largest producer of the material worldwide, the meteoric rise and stellar success of Aliko Dangote has yet to translate into cheap and readily available cement for Nigerians. Curiously, we look to see how these two debutantes to the cement export business will compete internationally when current local prices cannot remotely compare with cement's international market price.Many stakeholders in the housing sector are of the opinion that the costs of building materials hold the key to unlocking the deluge of mass housing supply to our cities. With the incessant inflation of prices however, they are disillusioned about the viability of using other alternative means to redress the cost of construction. But alternative options are indeed viable.A very viable option to reduce costs is the one used by former governor Lateef Jakande when he inundated the length and breadth of Lagos State with several low-cost housing estates during his tenure in office 1979 ' 83. Built in blocks of six units over three floors, each apartment was literally a bare shell of three bedrooms with other relevant spaces - containing the basic kitchen and toilet amenities. Finishes such as floor and wall tiles and kitchen cabinets were absent.The intention then was for the eventual homeowners to take up residence and apply finishes of their choice gradually over time as and when the resources became available. After all, it is an accepted local tradition that whoever is building a house must move into the house before completing it! And that is exactly how it happened.The affordability of these units due to the savings in construction costs expanded access to the low-income groups so much that even artisans were able to obtain some of these flats. Applicants hotly contested and quickly consumed the available units leaving the housing sector breathlessly yearning for a widespread replication of this successful endeavour ever since then, a generation ago.Another approach to reduce construction costs is to break away from ingrained design practices by eliminating spaces such as dining room and balconies that are dispensable to the functioning of low-cost accommodation. Balconies are especially relevant here, especially those superfluous ones that cantilever outwards from the supporting structural frame of residential blocks, apparently for cosmetic purposes.The suspended slabs of such balconies require 50 millimetres more reinforced concrete than the suspended floors within the same structural frame even though ultimately such balconies are not critical to the occupation of the accompanying flat!Because urban land is scarce and therefore expensive, this commodity significantly pushes up the unit price of mass housing built for popular consumption.To minimize this effect on unit cost will therefore require developers to optimize the number of apartments put up per plot (that is increase the floor/land area ratio) in every development. Investigations have revealed that the reason why the more than 400 units of different types of accommodation contained in the recently commissionedMichael Otedola Housing Estate at Epe in Lagos were so modestly priced, affordable to a much larger market. The project is an initiative of a former governor of Lagos State after whom the estate was named. Besides, increasing the number of flats developed per plot will also create more party walls between adjoining units thereby producing further savings. It is also important for every homebuilding project to take place on a large scale preferably in excess of 300 units at a time. The economies of scale resulting there from will dramatically depress costs unlike our present circumstances where housing developments of no more than 100 units per project dot our urban landscape.We can thus see that the persistent inflation in the building materials market notwithstanding, there are some other devices the application of some or all of which can enable the delivery of badly needed and affordable shelter to the larger public.
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