NHE developed 17 113 houses countrywide

From its inception in 1993 to mid-2019, the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) only developed 17 113 houses countrywide. This was revealed in the Namibia Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) launched by the World Bank on Friday.According to the report, most of the houses are two- and three-bedroom units, and few of which are affordable to lower-income groups.The NHE has focused most of its delivery on civil servants but is increasingly focusing its projects down-market, with simple bedsits and one- and two-bedroom houses.“The opportunity exists for the NHE to expand its housing delivery contribution through a better-focused strategic approach such as development of strategic partnerships, including Public Private Partnership (PPPs) to recapitalize existing and finance new housing projects. However, such an approach would require interventions to restructure, recapitalize, and repurpose the NHE to enhance the delivery of housing through its program,” the World Bank said.Public sector efforts to develop mass housing have not been successful to date. The Mass Housing Program was intended to deliver 185 000 houses at a rate of over 10 000 a year between 2013 and 2030 through co-financing with the private sector. The program did not yield the expected scale of delivery, and utilization of houses constructed through this scheme was affected by affordability constraints, as most units were too expensive to ensure effective demand from households.The Build Together Program, which intended to use microcredit driven by municipalities to assist with home building, also had limited success. Several factors explain why these public sector programs were not successful.Firstly, they had municipalities operate as retail finance intermediaries for household-level loans instead of building capacity of specialist financial service providers.Secondly, they lacked sufficient wholesale financing to grow microcredit books.Lastly, they were insufficiently rigorous in loan book management, capital recovery, and scaling of rollout, the World Bank pointed out. As a part of the Mass Housing Program, an annual grant to the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) has helped widen the reach of government funding to low-, ultra-low-, and ultra-ultra-low-income households through savings schemes and self-help building programs, the World Bank said.

NHE developed 17 113 houses countrywide

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NHE developed 17 113 houses countrywide

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