Effective Affordable Housing Provision in Developing Economies: Integrative Analysis of Users and Experts’ Solutions in Nigeria

Housing the urban poor remains a persistent challenge, despite evident research attention. It is pertinent to investigate the challenges in providing affordable housing (AH) using novel approaches. An extensive review of the literature reveals a significant gap between the demand for AH and the supply. For pragmatic solutions to these constraints, it is apposite to thoroughly examine solutions from users’ and experts’ perspectives and integrate them. This study employed a participatory research methodology to explore informal housing solutions for the urban poor and to diligently investigate expert solutions to AH challenges across the entire housing supply value chain (HSVC). On the one hand, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 randomly selected settlers across 5 strata of the largest Lagos slums to develop user-oriented solutions. On the other hand, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews were conducted with carefully selected housing experts in Nigeria to obtain expert solutions. Descriptive, content, deductive, and systematic thematic analyses were deployed to identify avenues for integrating solutions from the bilateral viewpoints of users and experts into effective AH solutions. Users' findings include that rental arrangements are preferable to homeownership for the urban poor, among other things. While experts opine that deliberate government policies that include the urban poor are the most critical solutions to AH provision challenges across HSVC in Nigeria. The integrated framework for effective AH provision developed in this study is significant for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11 in developing economies.