Social Welfare and Access to Housing Among the Middle and Low-income Earners in Nigeria: A Review of Frameworks for Housing Delivery

摘要

Adequate housing is one of the necessities of a qualitative life. It is only next to food and clothing in importance and contributes to the attainment of the physical and moral health of a nation. Decent housing also stimulates the social stability and economic development for the country. Successive Governments have attempted to provide access to qualitative housing for low-income groups without meaningful results. This study, therefore, interrogates the role of social welfare in enhancing access to housing among the middle and low-income earners to ascertain the extent to which the frameworks for housing delivery in Nigeria advance the welfare of the poor. With the aid of Social Democratic theory, the study opines that access to housing can only be democratized for all classes of income groups when the principle of social welfare constitute the foundation of the framework for housing delivery. The study used documentary tools in the generation of its data and analytical approach in its analysis. The study discovered among others; that social welfare orientation plays crucial roles in the creation of universal access to housing in several advanced countries around the world, and the lack of social welfare principle in the frameworks for housing delivery in Nigeria is to a large extent responsible for the ever-widening housing gap in the country. The study recommends that the Federal Government should undertake a review of the frameworks for housing delivery in order to establish the social welfare principle as a cardinal principle in the housing delivery strategies for the middle and low-income earners in the country.