Access to Land, Building Materials & Finance for Rental Housing Production in Dodoma Capital City, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper presents study findings concerning rental housing delivery systems in accommodating low-income urban residents in Tanzania. Generally, the study intended to establish operational and workable policy options for promoting affordable rental houses to narrow the urban housing shortage gap that has been increasing over time. The study involved 100 property developers, eighteen (18) key informants, six (6) brokers, and fifteen (15) tenants who were purposely selected for the study. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through interviews with property developers, and focus group discussions with key informants and local leaders. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 was employed in inferential and descriptive analysis. In line with this, a Chi-square technique was employed for describing the association between the variables while descriptive analysis was employed to describe the distribution of scores among the variables. The study has shown that 68% of property developers obtain land through an informal land market while the rest 32% obtain it from a formal market. Moreover, property developers have reported that savings are the dominant source of rental housing finance mechanisms in the study area which accounts for 65% of the housing finance mechanisms. Other sources are remittances (16%), pensions (8%), loans (7%), and borrowing from relatives (4%). The study has revealed that the Pearson chi-square value and significance value, confirm that, there is a significant association between affordability and the category of land market (= 65.696^, P < 0.001). Furthermore, the study has evidenced that individual property developers are dominating the rental housing market in the absence of policies, regulations, standards, and plans that could take into consideration the access to rental housing for low-income urban residents. The study recommends to the central and local government that there should be an urgent strategy to establish an enabling housing policy to promote affordable rental housing as an option for low-income urban residents in Tanzania.