Posted: 2022 | Pages: 70| Format: MS Word | Chapters: 1-5 | Others: Questionnaires & References

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ABSTRACT

This research is an Examination of a Sustainable Strategy for Improving Nigeria Housing Stock in Aba North with the use of local building materials and Techniques. The aim of this study is to examine a sustainable strategies for improving house stock in Aba North. However,240 research question were developed to collect data for the study. The study adopted descriptive research design using Aba North as a case study. A sample size of 240 was chosen using Taro Yaman’s formular while stratified random sampling Techniques was used to select the 240 samples to which questionnaires were administered to collect data. Data returned from 125 respondent were presented in statistical tables while percentages were used to analyze the data. The government agencies, private developers and Estate surveyors within Aba North formed the population of study. The findings shows that there are strategies that can be used to improve the housing stock through the use of local building materials and techniques, Such as Government involvement, availability of credit facility to private developers, reduced interest rate, availability of incentives to building sectors and availability of land. Finally government should set a committee whose responsibility will be to cater for the discovery of local building materials and equally improve upon these afforementioned strategies to enable rapid reduction of high cost of building materials and equally encourage low cost houses for low income earners

CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION

Housing spans a wide range, from shoddy nuts to Masions and places. In ordinary parlance, housing is regarded as a special necessity and its market, it usually termed “housing market” which impasses a wide variety of properties.

Next to food, shelter is the most important need of people all over the world. Moreso, housing provides security comfort and dignity it is a social necessity living which leads to a greater productivity of labour. The provision of this basic need still poses a problem to Nigeria, which Abia state belongs.(Aba North) The problem is at its crises level.

Proper housing is an important need for every human being. The proper utilization of this resources and economic well being greatly depend on the type of accommodation he has been provided with. However, a man’s income can justify his accommodation and if income is low, he has to be happy with a low cost house. The problem in Nigeria which Aba North belong to is that the bulk population is poor so they cannot afford to have good accommodation. This is as a result of high cost of materials, labour and technical know-how.

The need for finding out a method of constructing a proper dwelling house at a cost within the reach of all concerned is therefore the most pressing need of today. From the observation, the solution is the use of locally available materials, and these calls for the urgent need to improve our housing stock by means of local materials and techniques to enable the poor masses have access to a good accommodation.

1.1 Background and Need for the Study

The distribution of housing stock can be geographically done according to accommodation type. Geographically, the distribution is between urban and rural areas on one hand and among the urban centres on the other. Generally there is no quantitative problem in the rural areas. in case of the urban areas, the distribution problem is most evidenced in the federal capital and the state capitals.

As for the distribution of accommodation in existence and the type of accommodation demanded, because of the increase in the standard of living and the structural change in population taste has changed from the traditional accommodation to self contained accommodation in the form of flats and flatlets.

The shortage of these type of dwelling houses contributed immensely to our housing problem. In Aba North for example.

Prices of land and building materials should be reasonable in other to provide adequate housing. As long as cost of land and materials are high the deficiency in qualitative and quantitative housing will hardly be remedied. The resultant effect of this excessive or prohibitive cost of housing is exploitation of tenants by the landlords who demand very high rent, therefore high cost of housing and housing policies can also be seen as problems that led to shortage of housing stock.

          Another or most of the things that led to housing shortage in Aba North, this to some extent has to do with the advancement of imported materials for building construction instead of basing or trying to improve in our previous local sourced materials.

          Secondly, the low utilization of our locally building material equally led to the shortage of houses. For example cement stabilized late rite bricks are used against our traditional mud house material, and this is because mud is wet, soil mixture of inorganic matter derived from weathered rocks or organic components. The popularity of mud houses has reduced in this modern day construction due to unstabilized nature against destructive agents.

Prior to the advancement of modern construction/materials, there are various soil types that occur in the tropics and sub-tropic areas. These soil type are previously used in building construction with small quantity of cement. And late rite are equally found in most of our cities and it’s a special building material normally used to improve the soil resistance against the destructive influence of weather.

Late rite, its stabilization increases the strength and cohesion of the late rite, thereby, reducing moisture movement and make late rite water proof.

Before the introduction of conventional houses/materials with their exorbitant nature, the type of materials used in construction of building include the following:

Clay, sand, wood from our local trees, burnt bricks lime stone, gravel, granite, cement, all the materials for cement and fired braces are locally sourced but most at times their production plants and machines including spare parts are largely imported. And the low level of utilization of these proven local building materials has led to shortage of houses to a great extent.