With landlords passing on the price of skyrocketing inflation, Nigeria’s economic crisis is severely affecting tenants in Lagos. This is driving residents farther out, disrupting children’s schooling, and making the already notorious commutes for workers even longer.
The nation’s huge, constantly expanding economic metropolis, home to more than 20 million people, has long failed to meet the demand for housing, with an additional 3,000 people moving in every day.
However, the economy has been rocked by government-led economic changes, such as the withdrawal of a gasoline subsidy and the floating of the naira currency.
Rents are rising on Lagos’s wealthier islands as well as the less expensive and impoverished mainland, in a metropolis that is home to millions of unorganised workers, a strong middle class, and scions of oil riches.
“I might just have to find a way to plead with my landlord,” said Yemisi Odusanya, a 40-year-old cookbook author and food blogger.
Even though her landlord in Lekki increased the rent by 120 percent, she is unlikely to find a better bargain elsewhere for her family of seven after giving birth to twins last year.
“I’m planning to pack out,” Bartholomew Idowu, a transportation worker, said emphatically, though he wasn’t sure where he and his children would move.
The landlord of the mainland resident hit him with a 28 percent rent increase, raising his annual rent from 350,000 naira ($232) to 450,000. This is a substantial amount in a nation with a GDP per capita of $835.
Children changing schools
Following a recent revision to its inflation figures, the government reduced the official year-over-year inflation rate from 34.80% in December to 24.48 percent in January.
That’s been of little consolation to ordinary Nigerians.
“The way out at the moment is to look for a way to pay,” said Dennis Erezi, a journalist, noting that his 31-percent rent increase is still cheaper than moving.
A year and a half ago, Jimoh Saheed, a personal trainer, was forced to vacate his one-room home in an Ikoyi middle-class suburb when his landlord more than quadrupled his rent to 2.5 million naira.
His two daughters had to switch schools and now pay for transport since they no longer lived near enough to walk to class after he moved to the mainland, which put him farther away from his clientele.
His rent was increased by 25% by his new landlord at the end of last year.
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“This is affecting me emotionally, it’s affecting me mentally, and in fact, physically,” said the 39-year-old, who said his earnings have not kept up with the pace of inflation despite taking on more work.
According to lawyers, rent increases should be agreed between parties and cannot be enforced unilaterally.
But laws are rarely enforced without the threat of a lawsuit, attorney Valerian Nwadike told AFP, noting an uptick in tenant-landlord disputes in the past year.
Luxury market
Nigerians have endured the worst economic crisis in a generation for over two years, despite the government’s promises that its economic reforms will finally pay off.
Additionally, there are structural problems at work: developers must contend with a complex regulatory environment and high interest rates that make mortgages unaffordable for the majority, according to housing analyst Babatunde Akinpelu.
Lagos is also home to an outsize number of Nigeria’s jobs — leading to an unending stream of people pouring in.
Even as cranes and construction sites whir across the city, many new developments are targeted to the high-end market — foreigners, Nigerians in the diaspora, or oil sector workers, many of whom earn in dollars.
The result is a bifurcated housing market, where increased supply in the luxury sector doesn’t trickle down to the rest of the housing stock, said economist Steve Onyeiwu.
“Most of (Lagos’s) landlords are exposed to dollar-denominated expenses,” like loans or mortgages for properties abroad, even as the naira’s value has collapsed, said a director at Island Shoreline, a property management company, adding his own landlord recently tried to raise his rent 100 percent.
Improved public transit, such as the new rail line connecting Lagos and Ibadan, might alleviate pressure, but for now, there’s a “snowball effect” of rising prices, he noted, asking that his name not be used given the sensitivity of rent hikes.
With leases typically paid upfront for anywhere between one and three years, both landlords and renters try to negotiate a good deal to hedge against inflation.
But the current spike in rents is “alarming,” said real-estate agent Ismail Oriyomi Akinola, noting 200 percent jumps on the wealthy Victoria Island.
“Good shelter is very key to every individual,” he said. “Not only for the rich.
This report was earlier published by AFP, rewritten by The INTERCEPT
