NHE wants to construct 423 houses

WINDHOEK, 15 AUG  – The National Housing Enterprises (NHE) has requested for a proposed strategy for the construction of 423 houses in Rundu, Omuthiya, Oshakati and Okahao by the end of February 2019, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gisbertus Mukulu has said.
Mukulu made the announcement on Monday at the handover ceremony of a house by Standard Bank Namibia through its Buy-a-Brick initiative to Paralympic Games gold-medallist, Ananias Shikongo.
He thus called on the local authorities to avail serviced land to NHE at affordable prices that will enable it to construct and sell the houses that are affordable to the majority of Namibians.
He explained that apart from limited financial resource at NHE’s disposal, there is also a lack of available serviced land for the development of houses in local authorities
The available serviced land is very expensive and has an ultimate effect on the cost of housing products, he added.
He however expressed that unfavourable housing prices in Namibia are being fuelled by expensive municipal land.
Mukulu said currently there is not enough supply of housing stock in the market and consequently the profit-oriented developers have an opportunity to exploit market forces to their advantage.
This means that low-income groups will not be able to acquire decent houses, he added.
“We at NHE are aware of some challenges before us in the provision of housing to the nation,” he noted, saying that these challenges include limited public investment in housing and municipal infrastructure, which contributes significantly to very high costs of houses in Namibia.
The CEO continued that NHE could not do what the private institutions are practicing by inflating housing prices as its target income group will not afford them.
As a public entity, the NHE is further faced with a challenge where it competes for the acquisition of housing land with private sector institutions, which are prepared to pay the high cost of land and simply transfer cost to the clients, Mukulu said.
NAMPA