Cooperative societies and the urban housing supply: A study of lagos, nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to establish the scope of co-operatives' housing supply activities in Lagos and their potential as alternative housing suppliers in the city accounting for up to thirty percent of the estimated seventeen million housing deficits in Nigeria. This is with a view to ascertaining their capacity to enhance the ability of Lagos State to meet up with the affordable housing targets of the SDGs. This is vital if target 1 of SDG 11 that focusses on affordable housing provision is to be realized. The study adopts an explanatory, sequential Quan-qual mixed-method design. For the quantitative phase, a survey based on a systematic random sampling of four hundred and one co-operative leaders was done with statistical analysis was done. For the qualitative aspect, a focus group discussion was carried out and analysed with a computer-aided qualitative data analysis system (CAQDAS). Findings show that co-operative societies are most active in land acquisition activities but their capacity to convert these lands to housing units is limited, and that co-operative societies are as constrained as other housing suppliers in meeting transaction costs. However, seven crucial success factors for co-operative societies' involvement in housing supply were discovered in the qualitative phase; which has not been identified by previous researchers in this study. These provide fresh policy directions for the sector.