Probing the Drivers of Housing Deficit in Ghana: A Fresh Scoping Review

Abstract

Purpose: The study sought to identify the most reported relevant drivers of housing deficit in Ghana from empirical studies and to be guided by them to propagate practical micro and macro levels housing strategies that could be pursued by households, communities, and government to address the housing needs of both rural and urban households. The review makes a distilling contribution to the housing literature advancing the critical drivers of housing deficit and propagating the dire need for resilient housing remedies in Ghana.Methods: The study adopted an exploratory research design and mainly reviewed relevant housing literature comprising of scholarly articles, research papers, policy documents, conferences proceedings and dissertations. A thematic content analysis was undertaken to facilitate the mapping out of the interconnected web of drivers of the housing deficit.Results: The review of the literature indicated that housing deficit in Ghana is driven by a complex web of broad factors of demographic, financial, land, planning and policy drivers. It was also identified that previous research mainly focused on state-centred approach to the housing deficit and neglected the contributions and challenges of individual or community level housing delivery.Conclusion: Mass social housing is resistant to policy interventions and national housing policies have failed to rescue the housing situation. Consequently, housing policy intervention should shift attention from state-centric housing model to individual or community level housing construction, largely because the interplay of the micro and macro level housing remedies have the capability of providing a resilient remedy to housing deficit in Ghana