Tenants, NGOs condemn escalation of rent in Rivers

Tenants and civil society groups in Rivers State under the umbrella of Advisory Forum on Rent-Control’, have condemned the escalating cost of accommodations in Rivers State, especially the state capital, Port Harcourt.

They have formed a forum through which to address the situation and arrest the negative trend which has seen hike of rent of different categories of accommodations risen to as high as over 150 percent in the city of Port Harcourt within the past one year.

This, they argued has precipitated a housing crisis and attendant socio-economic confusion in the state with many now living in squalor and overcrowded accommodations.

According to the stakeholders, the hike in rent, which had gradually grown over the last six to 12 months, has left existing and prospective tenants exasperated, leading to a steady exodus from the city centre, Port Harcourt town and adjourning areas in Obio/Akpor, to suburbs, such as Igbo Etche and Obigbo.

Caesar Enwefah, human rights activist and convener of the forum, speaking at the inaugural meeting of the forum in Port Harcourt, pressed for avenues for affordable housing for the masses, arguing that the present rate of increase in rents will triple by the end of the year.

He regretted the hike of rent at almost 300 percent, saying; “Before now, self-contained room was going between N150,000 and N200,000. It is now between N500,000 and N700,000 and by the end of the year, it may get to N1.2 million.”

He claimed that the current scarcity of living spaces is artificial, refusing to follow the popular route of blaming the shortfall in affordable housing on increasing population figures and migration from neighbouring states.

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Enwefah said; “Rivers State is not in active shortage of housing. Rivers State has houses. What we are experiencing is because of the lapses in the Ministry of Urban Development that created the artificial scarcity in housing.

“They give license indiscriminately to landlords to convert sections of their property to stores and such, thereby reducing affordable residential spaces.”

Chairman of the ‘Advisory Forum on Rent-Control’, Mina Aprioku, said the solution to the housing crisis lies in a conscious effort to provide affordable housing, especially low cost housing for citizens.

He said that state and local governments can take advantage of the huge land mass, including creeks, in the state to provide housing for its teeming population.

Aprioku argued that if a local government chairman in the riverine areas of the state, for instance, “decides to reclaim a hectare of land in the creeks in a month, imagine how many plots of land would be available for housing within one year.”

In reaction to the housing crisis,  a tenant at Rumunduru, a community in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, which is within the larger Port Harcourt metropolis, said the N350,000 he paid annually for a one-bedroom apartment in the community was recently increased to N450, 000, while the rent for his wife’s one-room shop was increased from N75,000 to N150,000 without notice.