By Amin Kef Sesay
Every rainy season brings up sharply to the fore the issue of the risky, miserable plight of hundreds of thousands of our fellow Sierra Leoneans living on, or just a little above the poverty line, crammed into very unsuitable over-crowded dwellings along the entire coastline of the Freetown and the western area, stretching from as far as Wellington and Calaba town in the east, to Kanikay, Cline town, Susan’s Bay, Government Wharf, King Jimmy, Kroo, Bay, Congo town to as far as Aberdeen and Lumley that are highly prone to flooding.
Clearly, any scheme by Government and Council in partnership with the private sector offers great opportunities for employment of thousands of skilled and unskilled tradesmen and laborers, as it potentially holds opportunity for generation of billions of Leones annually in revenue.
To say the least, access to decent housing should be seen as a fundamental human right that leads to better health and safety from environmental hazards, such as flooding.
From the Government’s point of view, after independence, a pilot low cost housing scheme was established by the Government at Kissy. Looking back, the initiative was a very good one to provide decent housing with appropriate amenities for low cost income earners and if expanded upon would have gone a very long way to address the huge housing crisis that more than half of urban dwellers who do not own their own houses are now faced with that keeps growing daily as more and more people migrate from the provinces into the city in search of greener pastures.
The research by The Calabash shows that the Government needs to prioritize a well- organized, effective low and medium income earners housing scheme. It also shows that many families cannot afford to pay up to Le2.5 million to Le3 million and above per year for a decent two rooms and parlor accommodation and are condemned to living in many cases in cramped houses where some sleep in the parlor and many in the room.
Clearly, lack of investment in this area year after year, as the only houses now being built are for rent in dollars and geared towards those that have very high incomes or have relatives overseas that can afford to pay rents for them in dollars, pounds or euros. This means that the demand for decent affordable housing far outstrips supply in Freetown and the western area.
Looking back, a Sierra Leone Housing Corporation set up decades ago which should have been the harbinger of a broad scale national housing scheme has woefully failed to take off the ground, leaving the supply of housing purely in the hands of rich individuals.
Given that lack of decent housing is a clear sign of poverty, it is time that focus is paid to the establishment of a national housing scheme, starting with reclaimed lands in the western area being used as collateral to tempt the banks and other local and international other financial institutions looking to invest surplus capital into housing financing.
From available statistics, the justification for Government to provide decent housing for its citizens as a major way of improving on their health and standard of living is as such:
94% of homes have no flush toilets, 66.6% live in 1 or 2 rooms, 43.6% of households live with 5-7 family members, 24% of houses are zinc construction and 13% made of mud, 60% have a pit latrine for a toilet; the remainder has no toilet provision.
30,000 households depend on unsafe drinking water sources.
1 in 5 Freetown residents sleep in a room with 10 or more people
Many slum communities do not have safe playing spaces for children, markets, recreational centers, heath centers, schools, etc.
