Housing expert urges FG to alleviate housing challenges

A housing expert, Mr Festus Adebayo, has urged the Federal Government to make the Family Home Fund (FHF) scheme effective in 2018 to alleviate the housing challenges in the country.

Adebayo, the Managing Director of FESADEB Communications Ltd., convener of the annual Abuja International Housing, made the call on Tuesday in Abuja.

The Family Home Fund is a Social Housing Programme initiated by the Federal Government to provide inexpensive mortgages for low-income individuals and families across the country.

Under the scheme, civil servants who earn a salary of at least N30,000 and above can have access to mortgages to own a home.

Expressing worry over the non-implementation of the fund, Adebayo said that the scheme, as one of the Federal Government’s intervention, was conceived as a social investment tool to make the housing sector viable.

Adebayo called on the government to ensure that the scheme would be achievable in 2018.

He recalled that the fund was established in 2016 by the Federal Government and in 2017, N100 billion was allocated for the fund in the budget but was not implemented.

According to him, another N100 billion has also been earmarked in the 2018 budget for implementation of the scheme.

“The Family Home Fund should be made effective in 2018 and Nigerians should be allowed to know more about the operations of the fund and feel the impact.”

“The general public should be sensitised on the procedures for accessing loan from the fund and the purpose of establishing the fund should be actualised in 2018.”

“What happened in 2017 where Nigerians just read about the fund on the pages of newspapers should not happen in 2018,’’ he said.

The fund, which has the World Bank and the African Development Bank as its contributors, is expected to bridge the affordability gap by providing long tenor mortgages at single digit interest rates to qualified first-time home buyers.

Under the scheme, real estate developers for social housing projects are to borrow from 80 percent of the cost of projects from the fund and raise 20 percent counter fund on their own.