Identifying Current User-Characteristics Influencing Housing Preferences in a Proposed Low-Income Estate Redevelopment in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Having fallen into disrepair, the Lagos State Development and Property and Property Corporation (LSDPC), Nigeria was to redevelop the studied low-income housing estate, which it built in early 1980s. This study highlights current users’ characteristics which exhibit relationship with their housing preferences in the eventual redevelopment, for enhanced satisfaction. To achieve this aim, the study identified current users’ characteristics and examined the degree of their correlation in satisfaction with some established domains of the housing environment, with a view to assessing those, which determine current dissatisfaction ratings and by implication shape housing preferences in the envisaged redevelopment programme. The research is correlational. The survey utilised structured Likert-scale questionnaires to collect data from systematically sampled 142 of the 714 households. Housing environment research variables were established in three domains; ‘infrastructures, ‘building features’, and ‘management’. Pearson Correlation Analysis was utilised, due to the nature of data, to test the relationship between selected user characteristics and level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with selected elements of the domains. The resultant correlation coefficients were further corroborated with crosstabulations of selected user characteristics against the domain factors. The study revealed residents’ assessment of current state of infrastructure, building features and management services as poor, in parts. The factors which exhibited relationship with users’ preferences were found to include ‘tenure status’ and ‘length of stay’ in the estate. The others were ‘family size/structure’ and ‘age’ of household heads. With building features constituting prime and rigid attributes of the housing environment, an appreciation of these factors would guide public policy on user needs and perceptions for enhanced satisfaction and pre-emption of user activism attributable to user-group dynamics, hereafter. Broadly, the study recommended amelioration of identified areas of user dissatisfaction with Infrastructures in ensuing redevelopment. For building features, the study recommended improvement, in addition to proactive home-ownership allotee profiling system to embrace identified user characteristics in future projects.