The Integrated Housing Development Program

Abstract

The city of Addis Ababa, the leading urbanizing city in the country, accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total urban population in the country (CSA, 2014). Rapid urbanization, coupled with high population migration into the city, has accelerated the housing stock demand beyond capacity. The housing sector that engages in supplying housing stock to the city’s residents has been in long-standing strain. At the beginning of the year 2000, the city’s nearly 4 million inhabitants had a housing supply backlog of about 300,000 units. While these numbers show the housing supply shortage in the city, existing housing infrastructure is also characterized by poor and, oftentimes, poor conditions. In Addis Ababa, housing supply is also most critical to the middle and low-income groups of the population. A number of factors fostered the poor housing supply conditions in the city. First, there is a lack of access to affordable land and the widely practiced market-oriented land management system (Tesfaye 2007). Besides poor land management practices, the lack of a diversified housing delivery system, the absence of a robust and affordable housing construction industry, and the absence of a diversified housing financing system are all factors that continually shape the housing stock supply in the city. Particularly among the urban poor, limited access to decent and affordable housing has driven fast-growing informal and squatter settlements in the city.