ABSTRACT
Housing is fundamentally important – to poverty reduction, economic functioning, and quality of life as well as to transport issues. The nature of the existing housing situation deserves direct attention, especially because of the distributional problems that pervade this aspect of urban society. Analysis of housing is crucial in a book that examines urban governance. It is a challenging task, however, because post-colonial Ghana has never implemented an omnibus national housing policy which lends itself easily for evaluation. Twice (1986 National Housing Policy and 1992 National Shelter Strategy) it attempted to formulate a housing policy, but without success. Since then, it has been trying to put together a third but it is not clear when the process will end (UN-HABITAT, 2011). Nevertheless, successive governments in Ghana with the declared aim to provide adequate and affordable housing to urban citizens have used several strategies spelt out in different documents, such as budgets, party manifestos, and national development frameworks. Broadly, they range from public, private, and public-private partnership approaches to housing provision. Within this panoply of approaches, several specific policies have been pursued and researched.
