Housing quality and its predictors in public residential estates in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Improving access to good quality and sustainable housing environment for residents in urban areas in the developing world has been engaging the attention of housing scholars, researchers and developers. Consequently, the extent to which government-constructed residential estates in urban areas are providing residents with good quality housing environment has been investigated in many cities in developing countries. However, in a rapidly growing megacity like Lagos, Nigeria, the situation has not been adequately investigated. This study relied on data collected via a questionnaire survey of 379 residents to investigate housing quality (HQ) and its predictors in 15 government-constructed residential estates in Lagos State, Nigeria. The outcomes of descriptive statistics and categorical regression analyses (CATREG) show that over 50% of the respondents in the survey perceived the buildings and their neighbourhood environments and the overall quality of housing to be good. Around 66% of the variance in R2 was explained by the regression model, with adequacy of housing units’ characteristics, type of housing, level of security in the estates and state of repairs of the buildings emerging as the top four predictors of HQ. This study is very instructive by revealing that in order to achieve improved quality of housing environment in government residential estates, public housing developers should give adequate attention to the design and construction of dwelling units, the right mix of housing types, security of lives and property and the use of easily maintainable building materials in the development of such schemes in urban areas in Nigeria.