Eighty-nine per cent of Namibians do not qualify for home loans: Venaani

Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) president, McHenry Venaani said on Wednesday that 89 per cent of Namibians do not qualify for conventional home loans and cannot access commercial housing.

Venaani said this at PDM’s housing conference in Windhoek that also saw the attendance of officials from the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia and youth activists. Venaani stressed that those not qualifying for home loans cannot access commercial housing, a situation he said has forced Government to build 12 000 new informal homes yearly.

‘However, the task of formalising and upgrading these settlements is huge in scale and has proven too big for the government to tackle. The extent of the backlog is variously estimated to be between 85 000 and 110 000 houses. Secondly, house prices have risen sharply in recent years, with the rate of price increases estimated recently to be second in the world only to Dubai,’ Venaani added.

The housing backlog, Venaani said, is attributed mainly to the slow pace in the supply of
houses and rapidly rising demand due to the growing number of urban households.

‘According to the latest budget books, the urban ministry strived to construct 5 000 houses for the 2021/22 financial year, but managed to build only 1 479. It serviced only 1 751 plots. The government spent N.dollars 376 800 000 million on this under the ministry’s housing, habitat and technical services,’ Venaani said.

Meanwhile, political analyst Ndumba Kamwanyah told Nampa that gatherings of this nature, organised by political parties are crucial especially when they involve experts, for policy development.

‘The problem with our political parties has always been that they don’t put a lot of effort in generating information that they need for their policy formulation. Our Constitution is not that strong when it comes to the promotion of the welfare and well-being of the Namibian people, if you compare it with the Constitution of South Africa. As a result, we have ended up with a situation where housing has been commercialise
d, is being seen as a commodity and profit, when it is not supposed to be like that. Housing is a human rights issue,’ Kamwanyah added.

Source: Namibia Press Agency