What If The Government Just Builds Rental Housing Instead?

The Simple Question with a Complicated Answer

“Why doesn’t the government just build rental housing?”

It’s one of those questions that makes perfect sense until you start unpacking it. Because when you consider that over 80% of Nigeria’s urban population rents, and only one in four homes is owner-occupied, it seems obvious that government-backed rental housing would be the fastest way to close the affordability gap.

It could, in theory, allow the government to regulate rents, reduce pressure on low-income earners, and even stabilize the housing market. But that’s where the theory ends and reality begins.

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1. The Cultural Preference: Our Deep-Seated Ownership Obsession

In Nigeria, the dream of “making it” has long been tied to homeownership. Owning land and property is not just a financial goal. It’s a cultural statement of stability, maturity, and arrival. To most Nigerians, rent is a temporary phase, a waiting room on the journey to ownership.

That’s why even the most well-intentioned rental housing policy is a tough sell. It doesn’t align with what the average citizen wants long-term, nor what politicians find rewarding to champion. Politically, it’s easier to commission “affordable estates for sale” than to manage an ongoing rental program that doesn’t generate visible wins or ribbon-cutting opportunities.

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2. The Cultural Problem: Poor Maintenance Culture

The second challenge is a far less glamorous truth: Nigerians struggle with maintenance. Government properties, from public housing to basic infrastructure, often deteriorate soon after completion.

Running large-scale rental housing requires continuous management. Staffing, cleaning, equipment upkeep, and long-term asset care. This introduces operational costs that many public agencies are neither structured nor incentivized to handle.

Without a solid facility management culture, even subsidized rent quickly turns into a financial drain. And if rent prices are raised to cover these costs, the “affordable” aspect disappears.

It’s a catch-22: Charge too little, and the project collapses under its own costs. Charge too much, and it fails its social purpose.

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3. The Economic Reality: Build, Sell, Move On

The third reason is economic and perhaps the most decisive. Governments, like private developers, are constantly under pressure to recover investments quickly. From a fiscal perspective, building homes and selling them outright is faster, cleaner, and easier to scale. It delivers quick wins: revenue recouped, investment rotated, and visible results within political timelines.

Rental housing, by contrast, ties up capital. It demands patient money, a luxury most public budgets (and politicians) don’t have. This is why many housing ministries prefer the build-sell-reinvest model over the build-manage-maintain cycle.

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Why Rental Housing Might Be the Missing Link

While the “build and sell” model offers quick wins for developers and helps the government recover investment faster, it does little to close the persistent housing gap for the majority. Building rental housing, especially when structured as long-term, well-managed public or cooperative rentals, could offer a more sustainable solution. 

Here’s why:
Renting spreads housing access across income levels, allowing people to live closer to where they work without the crushing burden of upfront ownership costs. It also provides mobility in a fast-changing economy, where people often migrate for jobs or education. Beyond affordability, a strong rental system creates steady income streams that can fund maintenance, regeneration, and even new housing projects, turning housing from a one-time expense into a self-sustaining public asset. 

In essence, if managed transparently and professionally, government-led rental housing could serve as a public utility, stabilizing cities, reducing homelessness, and ensuring that shelter remains accessible to those who need it most.

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It’s Not About Buildings, It’s About Systems

The issue, therefore, isn’t just about building houses. It’s about building systems that can maintain and manage them sustainably. If Nigeria ever hopes to implement a government-led rental housing scheme, it will first have to fix the structural dissonance in governance, where public agencies are rewarded for completing projects, not for sustaining them.

It must professionalize facility management, establish transparency in rent collection and maintenance budgets, and introduce laws that protect both tenants and government assets.

Until that happens, every well-meaning attempt at rental housing will keep collapsing under the same old weight of poor culture, poor management, and poor systems.

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Conclusion: Building the Foundation Before the Roof

Nigeria’s housing affordability conversation cannot start and end on price. Affordability without sustainability is just another temporary fix.

Before we talk about rent control or public housing, we must first talk about institutional reform: planning agencies that function, systems that maintain, and governance that prioritizes service over optics.

At PetitHaus, we believe that sustainable housing isn’t just about construction. It’s about creating systems that work for people at every income level. The future of housing in Nigeria lies not in chasing mass ownership, but in designing flexible access models that reflect how people actually live and earn today. 

Rental housing, co-ownership, and other adaptive frameworks can coexist to build a balanced ecosystem where stability is not tied solely to ownership but to affordability, proximity, and quality of life.

If we reimagine housing as shared infrastructure like roads or power, then the focus shifts from profit margins to public value, from short-term transactions to long-term social impact.

That’s the mindset shift PetitHaus is driving: housing as a continuum of access, not a privilege of ownership.