CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Housing is an integral part of human settlement that fulfils basic need and has a profound impact on the quality of life, health, welfare as well as productivity of man. It plays a crucial role in integrated physical and economic development, environmental sustainability, natural disaster mitigation and employment generation as well as wealth creation (Erguden, 2001; Boehm and Schlottmann, 2001; UN-HABITAT, 2006a).

The desire for adequate and affordable housing also has strong links to the need for security, safety and proper socio-economic status of individuals and communities. In spite of this widely acknowledged importance of housing and various efforts in making adequate and affordable housing available to majority of people, a large proportion of urban residents in less developed countries do not have access to decent housing at affordable cost (Tipple,2004; 2006; UN-HABITAT, 2006a; Greene and Rojas, 2008).

As a result, most urban residents in Developing Countries live in housing conditions that constitute an affront to human dignity and which comes with appalling social, economic, spatial and health implications (Rondinelli, 1990; Cotton and Tayler, 1994; Opara, 2003; UN-HABITAT, 2006d; Coker et al., 2007; UNFPA, 2007). Hence, inadequate housing condition has become an intractable challenge that has continued to receive attention from governments and individuals in many developing countries.