Lagos deputy governor advises young workers to live with parents or share rent

Lagos State Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat urged young workers to reconsider the immediate pressure of renting expensive apartments. He advised them to consider living with parents, relatives, or in shared accommodations as a financially prudent step while building their careers.

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Don’t let us misunderstand ourselves as a people. We are cultural people. 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 addressed concerns about young workers struggling with rising rents in Lagos, particularly a 22-year-old earning N100,000 monthly who faces annual rents of N1 million for a self-contained apartment. He stressed that accommodation choices should align with income, discouraging the pursuit of top-tier housing from the outset. "Don’t let us misunderstand ourselves as a people. We are cultural people," Hamzat stated, highlighting the common practice of young people living with family or relatives.

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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.

He further recommended that rent should not consume more than 40% of an individual's income to allow for other essential expenses like food, clothing, and transportation. The deputy governor also touched upon the state's housing strategy, emphasizing the need for mortgage financing over one-off payments. He explained that Lagos has a mortgage board to facilitate this, requiring proper identification and assessment of residents' repayment abilities.

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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.

To support this, the state is utilizing the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency (LASRRA) number to verify residents' identities, addresses, and places of work. This data helps assess their capacity for housing finance, ensuring a credit history that confirms their ability to pay. Hamzat used an example of a N7 million property, suggesting a 10% down payment as a starting point for potential homeowners.

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But, you know, the challenge is we cannot continue to buy houses the way we buy rice and yam. So, we must buy properties using a mortgage, and that’s why we have a mortgage board in Lagos.