HOUSING LOW INCOME EARNERS IN LUSAKA, ZAMBIA: MYTH OR REALITY: THE CASE OF THE NATIONAL HOUSING AUTHORITY (NHA)

Housing problems particularly for low income earners have persisted inspite of the fact that the National Housing Authority (NHA) has been providing to the public high, medium and low cost housing units on both rental and outright purchase arrangement. This study sought to decribe the socio-economic profile of occupants of National housing authority low cost housing units in Lusaka district. This was in order to ascertain the extent to which the public housing agency had lived up to its manadate of providind decent accommodation to all income groupings. The was prmarily quantitave as it sough factual responses as opposed to attitudes and perceptions of respondents.The population for the Study was occupants of NHA’s low cost housing units at Bennie Mwiinga and Nyumba Yanga housing complexes as well as Director level officials from NHA. The sample size for the Study was 101.This was broken down into 100 occupants of NHA’s low cost housing units, as well as a key informant (senior official) from NHA. Having purposively selected the two housing complexes, 100 low cost housing occupants were selected randomly using a list of addresses which acted as a sampling frame. Low cost housing units were selected because they should normally be more affordable to low income earners compared to medium and high cost units. The key informant was selected purposively owing to their expertise in issues pertaining to low cost and low income housing. Both primary and secondary data sources were utilized. A structured questionnaire, with closed ended questions was used to collect data from occupants of NHA’s low cost housing units. .An interview guide, with open ended questions was employed to collect data from the NHA official.The data collected was analyzed using social statisticla package for sciencess ( SPSS) version 20. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically. The Study revealed two major findings. First, the housing initiatives already undertaken by NHA were unaffordable to low income earners.The Study concludes that NHA has not played a significant role in alleviating housing problems for low income earners due to a discrepancy between institutional mandate and operational approach. The Study recommends that the Government of Zambia should provide a matrix of conducive policy, institutional and financial measures that will enable NHA to effectively fulfill its mandate of contributing to the alleviation of housing problems among the low income earners in Zambia.