Providing Adequate and Affordable Housing: A Pathway to Addressing Kogi State’s Housing Deficit (Published)
Kogi State faces a housing problem that is not only quantitative but also one of affordability, land, finance, infrastructure and delivery capacity. Local studies indicate rising housing demand and building-material costs in Lokoja, a weak link between housing policy and low- income households, and a long record of housing announcements that outpace completed, occupied schemes. Federal and state announcements since 2025, including a state memorandum of understanding for 228 semi-detached houses and federal Renewed Hope estates, make a clear delivery framework timely. This conceptual, desk-based paper argues that the deficit cannot be closed by building houses alone. Drawing on Turner’s housing-by-people thesis, Stone’s residual-income view of affordability, Nigerian housing scholarship and Sustainable Development Goal 11.1, it proposes the Kogi Affordable Housing Delivery Framework (KAHDF). The framework has six pillars (affordable land, affordable finance, affordable construction, appropriate design, enabling infrastructure and accountable governance), a four-question affordability screening test, measurable indicators for each pillar, and a phased implementation pathway. The paper concludes that architects and other built-environment professionals should take an active part in housing policy, community development and evaluation, and it identifies the empirical work needed to test the framework.
Keywords: Affordable Housing, Kogi State, housing deficit, housing finance, sustainable housing