The Lagos Chamber approved, at the last chamber meeting, the acquisition of two large plots of land with building capacity, with the aim of «decisively expanding the municipal public response and addressing the complex situation of housing shortage that exists in the municipality».
The final proposal, which resulted from negotiations with the Investment Fund that owns the land, amounts to 9,4 million euros, now following the process of acquiring the properties for consideration and decision by the Municipal Assembly.
The municipality's objective is to keep two rustic buildings, located in Caliças, with an overall building capacity of around 80 thousand square meters, in order to «design a large housing construction program that allows rebalancing the municipality's real estate market and creating an offer diversified, capable of responding to the multiplicity of profiles and housing needs that have been diagnosed, is what we intend to achieve with this investment».
When presenting the matter at a council meeting, the mayor of Lagos highlighted the importance of this decision, which, in his opinion, “constitutes an important milestone in land policy, encouraging the beginning of a new reality for the entire housing issue in terms of of supply and market regulation itself", due to the fact that the municipal patrimony of available land no longer meets the sufficient conditions to support a construction program of this scale and the 260 dwellings foreseen in the Local Housing Strategy (currently being implemented) fall short of the needs of the municipality.
The municipality's plans for these lands include the development of projects intended for public offering outside the 1st Law Program, in the form of supported rental, affordable rental and provision of dwellings for acquisition at controlled costs, but also the creation of conditions that encourage the accessible private supply by the private and cooperative sector and the construction of housing to be allocated to function houses or programs aimed at young people.
In a note, the Municipality explains that it is estimated that the subdivision operation of the two plots, as a whole, will allow the construction of up to 600 homes, in addition to equipment and services to support this new expansion area of the city.
According to official data from the municipality, between 2020 and 2023 the accumulated number of requests for housing support increased from 653 to 1903, representing an increase of 300%.
Also significant was the turnout for the competitions that took place to allocate the first 47 dwellings (out of a total of 260) to be built within the scope of the Local Housing Strategy, where 1260 applications were received, with a significant percentage of households (34% – 426 households), despite being in a situation of lack of
housing, does not fall within the scope of the 1st Right Program, «because it is not in an unworthy housing condition or because it has average monthly income above the admitted values, but still insufficient to meet the prices charged in the private housing market. ».
At this same meeting, the Lagos Municipal Housing Report for the year 2023 was presented, a document that compiles all relevant information on requests for support, as well as on the responses given by the municipality within the scope of Private Rental Support and the Local Strategy of Lagos Housing, to address this problem of housing shortage.
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