The case for affordable housing
Editor | Thursday April 1, 2010 00:00
We say Godspeed to this noble endeavour! Botswana's economy has been growing steadily over the years now. While this growth has brought prosperity to many, it has also led to land speculation as manifested in land and housing prices skyrocketing beyond the means of low-income families and entry-level graduates.
The result has been that only the rich or those commanding high-bracket salaries salaries can - and do - respond to adverts placed by estate companies, including the BHC. In this insouciantly free market, we have an ever-thickening mass of homeless people. IPS should surely address this problem, at least in part. It is our hope that the programme will not only facilitate home ownership but will also give people a choice of where they want their homes to be.
As the government and the BHC knock the IPS mechanism into shape, it should always be alive to the swelling masses of young people who graduate by the thousand from tertiary institutions here and abroad. Many of them are hired at public service entry-point salaries that place them outside the scope of BHC houses. No-one can expect a graduate with a P6 000 per month salary to afford a P2 500 per month house. Of course, many of these young people have competing interests and need a home from which to address them. And let us not forget that among these 'interests' is taking care of siblings; for the HIV/AIDS scourge has rendered many families child-headed.
It falls upon many of these young graduates - hardly adults, really - who have all along been looking after their siblings and have endured years of study in order to improve the lot of their siblings and their own. But with their meagre salaries, they find that they do not qualify for mortgages and cannot afford decent housing.
Hence we call upon the government to consider - alongside IPS - devising a tailor-made housing scheme for graduates. In the absence of such a specific programme, we fear that a housing crisis will prove difficult to avert. Needless to say, should the government pursue this, it will look to the BHC to address the fundamentals.
While we commend the BHC for floating a P2 billion bond in order to raise money for the 29 000 units it plans to build over the next three years, we fear that the structures will be similar to what already exists, and thus accessible only to a handful of people. Hence we call on the government to re-prioritise. Too much money is going into projects the country can do without when there is an almost desperate need for affordable homes for Batswana, for instance.
The BHC has said that given the current housing market, it cannot survive unless it pegs prices at market value. An injection of funds would therefore help the BHC to walk, rather than swim, through the waters. Perhaps it is even time to restructure the BHC itself to turn it into more of a public housing authority more responsive to its immediate market - the poor majority of Batswana, among them young graduates.
Lands minister Nonofo Molefhi said this week that the Botswana Housing Corporation would introduce an Instalment Purchase Scheme (IPS) for people who do not qualify for mortgage loans and that such people's monthly payments would convert into a purchase instalment. We say Godspeed to this noble endeavour! Botswana's economy has been growing steadily over the years now. While this growth has brought prosperity to many, it has also led to land speculation as manifested in land and housing prices skyrocketing beyond the means of low-income families and entry-level graduates.
The result has been that only the rich or those commanding high-bracket salaries salaries can - and do - respond to adverts placed by estate companies, including the BHC. In this insouciantly free market, we have an ever-thickening mass of homeless people. IPS should surely address this problem, at least in part. It is our hope that the programme will not only facilitate home ownership but will also give people a choice of where they want their homes to be.
As the government and the BHC knock the IPS mechanism into shape, it should always be alive to the swelling masses of young people who graduate by the thousand from tertiary institutions here and abroad. Many of them are hired at public service entry-point salaries that place them outside the scope of BHC houses. No-one can expect a graduate with a P6 000 per month salary to afford a P2 500 per month house. Of course, many of these young people have competing interests and need a home from which to address them. And let us not forget that among these 'interests' is taking care of siblings; for the HIV/AIDS scourge has rendered many families child-headed. It falls upon many of these young graduates - hardly adults, really - who have all along been looking after their siblings and have endured years of study in order to improve the lot of their siblings and their own. But with their meagre salaries, they find that they do not qualify for mortgages and cannot afford decent housing.
Hence we call upon the government to consider - alongside IPS - devising a tailor-made housing scheme for graduates. In the absence of such a specific programme, we fear that a housing crisis will prove difficult to avert. Needless to say, should the government pursue this, it will look to the BHC to address the fundamentals.
While we commend the BHC for floating a P2 billion bond in order to raise money for the 29 000 units it plans to build over the next three years, we fear that the structures will be similar to what already exists, and thus accessible only to a handful of people. Hence we call on the government to re-prioritise. Too much money is going into projects the country can do without when there is an almost desperate need for affordable homes for Batswana, for instance.
The BHC has said that given the current housing market, it cannot survive unless it pegs prices at market value. An injection of funds would therefore help the BHC to walk, rather than swim, through the waters. Perhaps it is even time to restructure the BHC itself to turn it into more of a public housing authority more responsive to its immediate market - the poor majority of Batswana, among them young graduates.
Today's thought Price is what you pay . Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffet