Lagos State Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, has advised young workers not to feel pressured to immediately rent expensive apartments, urging them to consider living with their parents, relatives or in shared accommodation while building their finances
Hamzat gave the advice during a question-and-answer session with Nigeria Info FM while responding to concerns about how young workers earning low incomes could cope with rising rents in Lagos.
He was asked how a 22-year-old earning N100,000 monthly could afford a self-contained apartment or mini-flat costing about N1m annually.
Hamzat said young people should consider accommodation that reflects their income rather than trying to start from the top.
“Don’t let us misunderstand ourselves as a people. We are cultural people. Do you understand? So, if I start work as a young person and I’m not married, a lot of us live with our parents. A lot of us live with our cousins,” Hamzat said.
“You know, go to Turkey, for example, and see how young people also live.
“So, if you don’t start from the top self-contained, you don’t start from the top. You start from the average depending on,” the deputy governor said.
Hamzat also said residents should not spend more than 40 per cent of their income on rent, noting that workers had other expenses to meet.
“In fact, if you spend more than 40 per cent of your income on rent, it is too high because you must eat, you must buy clothes, you must do transportation,” he said.
The deputy governor said the state’s housing strategy also involved making home ownership possible through mortgage financing, arguing that Nigerians could not continue to buy houses through one-off payments.
He said Lagos had a mortgage board to facilitate the system and that residents needed to be properly identified and assessed to determine their ability to repay.
“But, you know, the challenge is we cannot continue to buy houses the way we buy rice and yam. Do you understand? So, we must buy properties using a mortgage, and that’s why we have a mortgage board in Lagos,” Hamzat said.
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Your major concern should be regulation not advising people to live together