ABSTRACT
This chapter is situated in international policy transfer studies, focusing specifically on the adoption of neoliberal housing policies facilitated by global norms. It dismantles assumptions that the adoption of enabling policies produces favourable outcomes for market-driven processes and, in the case of Nigeria, mortgage sector development and private sector housing provision. Using secondary data, it shows that in adapting to market failure and the inability of the government to actualise its enabling role, households bypass formal processes of finance and construction, which partly explains the persistence of informal communities in cities such as Lagos. The chapter calls for the reappraisal of assumptions underpinning globally promoted housing policy norms and greater accounting of the risk of such policies becoming the route through which less favourable socio-political agendas of governments are enabled.
