I was raised at South Suntreso, a public housing project by our first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. The houses were for low-income families. They were affordable and adequate. They were semi-detached chamber and hall, each house with its own kitchen, toilet and bathroom. Each house was built with space for the homeowner to make extensions to the house if they wanted.
But South Suntreso was more than a public housing project; South became a tool for national integration and national development. You see, at South, we had families from almost every part of Ghana. My family was Fante but our next-door neighbor was an Ashante family who rented part of their house to an intense, well-built Ewe man who operated a laundry with his two brothers. The brothers were all bachelors.
A few houses up the street from our house was the Agyare family from Kwahu. Two houses from the Agyares was a Frafra family who cooked waakye. Three houses in the opposite direction was a Ga family, the Lamptey family. A hundred meters away from our house was another Ewe family, headed by a kind reserved man with two very enterprising wives. The two women did not live like rivals but as sisters and did everything together. They raised the children together, operated a retail shop together and they cooked and sold beans with gari and fried plantain in the mornings. They were inseparable.
A few houses away from them was a Busanga family.
I sat in the same classroom and played with boys and girls from every part of Ghana. The result? I grew up embracing every ethnic group in Ghana because I had experienced every ethnic group as part of my community from my boyhood.
The South model avoided the creation of an ethnic enclave and promoted national integration and development. No wonder that from my generation, South produced a number of key ministers of state and several important public servants.
These thoughts of the kind of housing environment I was raised in came flooding into my mind thanks to Graphic Communication Group. On Tuesday, 3rd August, 2021, Graphic Communication launched an interesting initiative on housing in Ghana. They called it the Housing Revolution in Ghana. I had the honor of being one of the guests at the launch.
The program compelled me to give housing more than a passing thought. My mind went to something I had read in Lee Kuan Yew’s book, From Third World to First – The Singapore Story. One of the striking things I read in the book was how Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of an independent Singapore, used housing to social engineer Singapore for progress and development.
I hail Singapore as one of the success stories of my generation. This once poor small island city state that gained its independence in 1959, two years after Ghana, transformed itself from third world status to first world in one generation under Lee Kuan Yew. The awesomeness of this achievement becomes apparent when one remembers that Singapore, unlike Ghana, has no natural resources and no hinterland. In addition to that, Singapore has many different races and ethnicities. Even now, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil to honor its multi-racial, multicultural heritage.
Singapore should not have succeeded and prospered but against all odds, it has. How did it do it?
In Lee Kuan Yew’s book, he reveals that one of the tools he used to forge a nation out of the different ethnicities and create the right environment for a prosperous nation was housing. Lee’s government invested a lot in the provision of housing but it was not only for providing shelter for the people. He used the provision of housing to force different races and ethnic groups to live together. So, the allocation of housing was done deliberately to make different races live as neighbors. For each block of apartments, quotas were given to the various ethnic groups so that no block was occupied by only one ethnic group.
It was not easy at the beginning as people resisted getting close to other races but Lee Kuan Yew knew that the future of Singapore depended on this social engineering and he persisted. In a few years, Singaporeans were seeing themselves as people of one nation and with that harmony and unity, national development followed.
Today, Singapore has a home-ownership rate of 91% and Singaporeans enjoy one of the world’s longest life expectancies and one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. In getting its housing policy right, Singapore created the environment in which its people could thrive.
In October 2013, Ghana Statistical Service published the report on housing in Ghana from the 2010 population and housing census. The report stated, “Many of the challenges faced by the poor can be linked to housing. This is because the housing environment represents an everyday-landscape, which can either support or limit the physical, mental, and social well-being of the residents.”
Singapore’s success can be traced in part to getting its housing policy right because a nation is as good as its housing environment. Affordable and adequate housing, that is housing with the right infrastructure and utilities in place, releases the energies of the people for development and harmony.
Why is Kasoa now a hotbed of violent crime? Check the housing environment. List all the hot spots of trouble and crime in Ghana and I will show you communities where the housing environment is poor.
So when we talk about housing or real estate, we are not just talking about shelter; we are talking about supporting or limiting the physical, mental and social well-being of the average Ghanaian. The challenge however is that we have a huge deficit in housing in Ghana. The 2013 Statistical Service report said, “Rapid increase in population in Ghana has resulted in a large housing deficit, especially in urban areas. It is projected that the country needs at least 100,000 housing units annually while supply is estimated at 35% of the total need.” Indeed, some other studies report a higher deficit of about 120,000 housing units per annum. Note, that was the need ten years ago. I am sure the situation is even more desperate today.
The implication for national development is very serious. We must understand that the provision of housing is not a luxury for the people neither is it a favour to the people. The point I am making is that if ever there was a need and a time for a real estate revolution in Ghana, it is now and I applaud Graphic Communication for catching the vision.
I hope that this revolution will result in fulfilling the dreams Ghanaians have for Ghana, dreams that housing can help to fulfil.