Perceptions and Acceptability of Multihabitation as an Urban Low Income Housing Strategy in Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana

Abstract

Urban low income households have often used multihabitation as a housing strategy to find affordable accommodation in the urban centres. Several factors have contributed to the gradual shift from multihabited compound houses to single family dwellings. These concerns have influenced the level of satisfaction of multihabitation and deterred real estate developers from engaging in such housing markets. Moreover, the changing socioeconomic conditions in urban centres resulting in the individualisation of family systems in the twenty-first century have undermined the benefit of multihabitation in urban low income housing provision. It is on this basis that a study is conducted to examine the perceptions and acceptability of multihabitation in the twenty-first-century urban low income housing provision in Ghana. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, primary data on households' perceptions and acceptability of multihabitation in the twenty-first century urban low income housing provision was collected from households in five low income communities in Greater Accra Metropolitan Area. From the study, it emerged that although there were challenges associated with multihabitation living arrangement, residents perceived that there were still social and financial capital advantages as well as psychosocial benefits such as security and stability that emerged from the close relationships fostered under multihabitation. Hence, it is suggested that governments should adopt multihabitation in urban low income housing provision in the twenty-first century but with design modifications. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.