The rental system in Ghana’s low-income housing communities, challenges and adaptation strategies

Shelter is one of the fundamental needs of human survival aside food and clothing. However, provision of adequate housing to accommodate people in urban areas has been a challenge in developing countries, including Ghana. This has caused many Ghanaians, especially the low-income group, to resort to the rental sector for their housing needs. It is widely discussed in the literature that each city user is to be accorded the needed right to utilise what exists in the city, including decent accommodation. This article examines the strategies put in place by low-income house tenants to cope with the challenges of renting houses in the Wenchi Municipality, in order to rightly utilise urban housing. The study used a quantitative approach and a questionnaire survey to collect data from 245 tenant household heads. Purposive and systematic sampling techniques were used to select the respondents for the study. The data was analysed using SPSS. The study revealed that rental problems faced by tenants and adaptation measures developed to cope in cities and bigger towns are not different from what exists in the smaller towns. The study recommended that rent control should be strengthened to perform its duties in the rental sector well enough to protect the interest of the urban low-income renters.


INTRODUCTION
Shelter is one of the fundamental needs of human survival aside food and clothing. However, the provision of adequate housing to accommodate people, especially the urban poor, has been challenging (Bujang, Afrane, Ariffian, Shuaibu & Kasim, 2016: 18). The acute shortage of housing is a principal issue for all, especially low-income earners (Aboagye & Sarpong-Kumankoma, 2011: 17). This is so because many nations, especially sub-Saharan Africa nations, have over the years experienced high urban population growth and high housing demands against inadequate supply (Magina, 2016: 24). As a result, more lowincome earners are becoming homeless, thus forcing them to adopt slums and squatter settlements as an option in most of the cities and towns (Serageldin et al., 2003, cited in Danso-Wiredu & Midheme, 2017. A report by the United Nations (UN) estimates that the urban population will increase to roughly five billion by 2030, due to high population growth (Kojo & Paschal, 2018: 23). It is also projected that, by 2021, approximately thirty-five million housing units will be needed on an annual basis to cater for newly formed households and the replacement of weak ones in the urban centres (Dzangmah, 2012: 11).
Research by Chiwenga (2019: 29) indicates that housing provision for the low-income groups has been a global challenge, as many cities and towns are unable to provide adequate housing to the urban poor, due to budgetary constraints. The pressure is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa (Appiah-Kusi, 2015: 25). This leads to the development of unplanned spatial activities in many cities (Appiah-Kusi, 2015: 15).
In the context of Ghana, house ownership involves a huge capital investment and serves as an indelible mark for individuals and property for the family. Due to this, housing, which is supposed to be a basic need, sometimes becomes a luxury, because many are unable to acquire it (Dzangmah, 2012: 31). Research has revealed that the vast majority of Ghanaians, especially the low-income earners, find it difficult to access decent accommodation (Aboagye & Sarpong-Kumankoma, 2011: 30). A revealing report from the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing (MWRWH) indicates that Ghana is having a huge deficit of approximately 1.7 million housing units (MWRWH, 2015). The report alluded to the fact that about 35% and 85% of Ghanaians do not have the financial capacity to afford a house beyond GHS12 000 and GHS72 000, respectively. 1 Areas that are much threatened include Accra, Kumasi Takoradi, and Tamale. Due to rural-urban migration, these cities are always overwhelmed with population, making access to accommodation difficult (Owusu-Ansah, 2012: 29;Danso-Wiredu, 2018: 19). Due to financial difficulty, most of the low-income earners have become homeless, thus compelling them to opt for slums and squatter settlements as options in most of the cities and towns (Serageldin et al., 2003, cited in Danso-Wiredu & Midheme, 2017. It is also revealing to note that some low-income urban dwellers live in small-sized single rooms, with those from extremely poor economic status migrants either sharing or staying with friends or relatives (Yankson, 2012: 12;Ofori, 2020).

Rental housing in Ghana
According to Ofori (2019: 169), rental accommodation has been acknowledged as an alternative method to address the housing predicament in sub-Saharan countries, specifically Ghana. Research has shown that, in Ghana, about one in every four households owns its own accommodation, while the remainder either rent or live in rent-free family houses with others living in slums (UN-Habitat, 2011). There are four types of rental housing providers: individuals or small-scale suppliers (UN-Habitat, 2003: 107), medium-and large-scale institutional owners and investors (Peppercorn & Taffin, 2013: 9); social housing (Peppercorn & Taffin, 2013: 9), and public sector housing suppliers (Gilbert, 2004). In Ghana, like in many other African countries, rental housing is normally found among private rental individuals (landlords or small-scale suppliers). Some unique characteristics of this type of suppliers is that rent prices are fairly low compared to the other groups. Often, suppliers live with the tenants in the same house (UN-Habitat, 2003). Peppercorn and Taffin (2013: 9) state that these groups of owners mostly consist of informal rent owners, because many of the landlords keep their properties off the books to avoid payment of taxes. Government have been taxing rental income higher than 'earned' income (UN-Habitat, 2011: 2).
Rental housing serves as a source of income and security for landlords, and offers an affordable accommodation choice for renters, especially workers and vulnerable households (Lonardoni & Bolay, 2016). At the national level, rental accommodation helps relieve the challenges in housing provision in many countries, especially in developing countries including Ghana (Ofori, 2019: 169). Despite this reality, the credibility of renting and multi-occupancy as alternative tenure options is ill-recognised by the government of Ghana as the effectiveness of the Rent Control Department (RCD) of Ghana is very minimal (Nsiah, 2017: 56). The RCD was established to create an enabling environment for all citizens to access decent and affordable accommodation, in order to promote the socio-economic development of Ghana. Such interventions have, however, failed to impact positively on the poor majority who still occupy single rooms with shared or no services (UN-Habitat, 2011: 2). Charles-Coll (2011: 19) points out that access to decent housing undoubtedly serves as a key determinant of human survival. This is so because, in the absence of decent accommodation, all other activities engaged by man for survival will come to a halt. Article 18 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana states categorically that the right to decent accommodation is highly linked to the citizen right to enjoy other basic human rights such as security/safety, privacy, education, and health. This is, however, not so in reality. The 2010 population and housing census report revealed that many renters in Ghana are deprived of these basic facilities, although they pay huge sums of money (GSS, 2014: 45). These challenges are attributed to many factors.

Rent affordability and system of payment
Rental affordability is ultimately an elusive concept that demands subjective judgements about how much income is too much to spend on housing (Belsky & Drew, 2007). The living standard of the vast majority of households among lowincome earners keeps deteriorating, because, after paying for rent, they are unable to afford other necessities such as proper healthcare, good nutrition, sanitation, and education (Hyde, 2018: 9). In Ghana, payment for rent is known as 'advance rent' -a practice that is incoherent with the Rent Act in Ghana (Arku, Luginaah & Mkandawire, 2012: 3177). Homeowners or landlords in Ghana, for instance, typically require private renters to pay a huge sum of money of about two to five years' advance for the rental unit and failure of the tenants to pay this advance rent will result in the eviction of the affected tenants (Addo, 2016: 631). In the private informal rental housing sector, landlords/ ladies rarely record their tenancy agreements formally and most of them do not provide receipts (Arku et al., 2012). Due to the absence of a legal agreement between most of the tenants and landlords, landlords evict tenants within their own power; the constant anxiety about tenants being evicted contributes to stress and ill-health (Luginaah, Arku & Baiden, 2010: 529). Ballesteros (2004) noted that the quality of rental housing is largely a function of rent levels -meaning that low rents provide poor housing quality. Several factors such as materials of the outer walls, type of water services, type of sewage services, tenure and food markets, public transportation, schools, and the availability of health clinic/ hospitals influence housing quality (UN-Habitat, 2003). Inadequate maintenance and housing conditions such as electrical faults, exposed roofs, and cracked walls, if not maintained, expose tenants living in the affected houses to danger. Landlords who live in the same house with the tenants do maintenance on time (UN-Habitat, 2003), but tenants are sometimes made to do maintenance work on their own or share costs for maintenance work to be done in their houses and rooms. UN-Habitat (2003)

Inadequate facilities and services
In Ghana, the vast majority of rental houses occupied by low-income renters are associated with a lack of basic housing infrastructure and have poor housing facilities (Ofori, 2020). Tenants are inconvenienced when facilities such as toilets, bathrooms, pipes, and kitchens are not available or are not located in the house (Amenyah & Fletcher, 2013: 39). Many rental houses in Ghana's low-income communities are characterised by poor sanitation, poor drainage, and poor waste management practices (Amenyah & Fletcher, 2013: 40). These challenges tend to have negative effects on the health of affected tenants. Usually, the outbreak of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, and malaria is associated with poor housing sanitation (Mara, Lane, Scott & Trouba, 2010). In houses where tenants are not in proximity of their places of employment, transport, schools, healthcare, markets, places of worship and other neighbourhood social infrastructure, tenants are faced with the challenge of travelling over a long distance to enjoy such facilities (UN-Habitat, 2003).

Security and safety
Research has asserted that both physical and socio-economic decay in many low-income areas has led to an increase in both petty and organised crime by some youth in Ghana (Oteng-Ababio, 2016: 51). Pickpocketing, armed robbery, occultism (also termed "sakawa", with the intention of inducing their victims to comply to their demands) (Oduro-Frimpong, 2011) have led to increasing safety concerns among vulnerable groups such as women, the elderly and even strangers in such communities (Wrigley-Asante, Owusu, Oteng-Ababio & Owusu, 2016). Research on safety in Ghana by Wrigley-Asante et al.
(2019) has shown that 93% of the respondents who took part in the study stated that they had been victims of crime at popular places such as transport terminals, public toilets, and at places where there is no street light at night. Adu et al.'s (2016) study has shown that dwellings without secure doors, walls, windows, or other security features afford robbers the opportunity to attack people. In addition, the weak nature of most of the structures occupied by low-income households includes incomplete and dilapidated buildings that are usually not safe in terms of natural disasters such as flooding and fires.

Privacy
Within the context of housing and overcrowding among low-income house renters in Ghana, many individuals may not be able to sustain personal space and privacy, due to limited living space (Yankson, 2012;Danso-Wiredu, 2018;Wrigley-Asante et al., 2019;Ofori, 2020: 14). Occupancy of more than three persons per room is not standardised by UN-habitat (Ofori, 2020: 14).
Where six or more people stay in one single room, there is no right to privacy. Adu et al.'s (2016) research has demonstrated that, where bathroom and toilet facilities are not provided, tenants in low-income housing resort to bathing outside and exposing themselves in public.  Morris and Winter's (1975: 27) theory of family housing adjustment is adapted for this study. The model explains that the way in which a society is structured determines how families are housed, its consequences for families as well as the decisions families make (Morris & Winter, 1978: 25) on the physical arrangement of the house. According to the theory, the family seeks five norms in the family housing adjustment process: housing space norms -when adjustment is made on residential spaces to create extra spaces for activities such as cooking, sleeping and bathing; tenure norms -ownership or renting of the houses; structure type norms -examples could be single family apartment, compound, detached and semi-detached; quality normsdeals with the extent of satisfaction, this is usually subject to family demands and expectations, and the neighbourhood and location norms -the community's comportment and the extent of relationship among community members. It also includes community infrastructure development such as road networks, health and educational facilities.

Strategies to survive rental housing in low-income housing communities
The theory also examines the different forms of adjustments that household or family members can make, in order to re-design their house to suit their needs. This article adopts the residential adaptation adjustment. This refers to the various activities in which household members can engage to make their house fit their needs (Sinai, 2001: 23;Imrie & Hall, 2003: 27). These include additions, alterations, remodelling and changing the functions of rooms (Hawkins & Stewart, 2002: 21). This study adapts the residential adaptation model to mean what different households living in a rented accommodation do to adjust the housing physical arrangements or the changes in social arrangement that make them fit to use their rented structures in the study communities. The more comprehensive models of housing adjustment include both moving and non-moving adjustment mechanisms (Sinai, 2001: 30;Quercia & Rohe, 1993: 20). This study, however, dwells on the non-moving adjustment mechanisms tenants adopt. It is common for renters to add household facilities such as toilets or kitchens to their rented houses or, in some instances, they change the usual design of the house for different uses.
For example, converting porches and kitchens into sleeping places. In situations where the family does not have the resources to effect such changes, other alternative measures are taken, including children sleeping with their friends or other relatives at night. Urban dwellers take these measures in order to utilise their right to the city.

STUDY AREA
The research was conducted in the Wenchi Municipality, the capital of the Bono region (see Figure 1), which is one of sixteen administrative regions in Ghana. Wenchi

Research approach
This article examines the strategies put in place by low-income house tenants to cope with the challenges of renting houses in the Wenchi Municipality, in order to rightly utilize urban housing. The researcher used a quantitative semi-structured questionnaire survey to collect information, because it allows for generalisation of findings across a population (Bryman, 2012: 232;Eyisi, 2016: 21). This approach also allows for the use of descriptive statistics.

Data collection
The study used a questionnaire survey to collect data from the household heads between 15 May 2020 and 30 June 2020. The questionnaire was composed of multiple closed-ended questions containing items of different format.
The questionnaire consisted of three sections. The first section, on the respondents' demographic profile, obtained personal information on age and education, length of stay, and housing type. The second section set eight tick-box statements (with options) to indicate the challenges of renting houses in the Wenchi municipality. Household heads were asked to indicate concerns related to security, services, price, facilities, housing size and quality, sanitation, waste disposal, and privacy. The third section contained 4 tick-box options, each to determine the strategies that housing tenants use to cope with the challenges in rental accommodation in the Wenchy Municipality. The results from these measurements form the items used in the descriptive analysis (Naoum, 2013: 39).

Data analysis
In analysing the data, responses from the completed questionnaires were computed, using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 25 (Pallant, 2013). The frequencies and/or percentages of responses were generated and reported, in order to analyse

Challenges associated with living in the study communities
Respondents revealed that they face several challenges as a result of where they live. Table 3 indicates that in the three communities, market

Security and safety
In Table 3, although the availability of service (15.5%) and security (15.9%) was rated low on average, tenants in Akrobi rated security (35.8%) as the major priority that determines their decision to rent accommodation. It must be noted that, although crime occurs in the Zongo and Jensoso communities, the respondents did not consider it a main concern in their decision to rent houses in the communities. The problem of insecurity among low-income renters in urban centres in Ghana has long been recognised as a growing and serious concern

Overcrowding
Results in Table 3 Yankson (2012: 12), and Addo (2016: 23) whose work established that low-income renters in the Greater Accra region do not get enough sleeping space. Cooper and Jones (2008: 261) established that overcrowding has health implications for renters. Tenants put themselves at greater risk of getting infectious disease such as meningitis, and overcrowding contributes to mental stress and reduces people's sense of general well-being. Table 3 indicate that most of the rental houses in the three communities lack basic sanitation facilities. In communities where these facilities are present, they were either deteriorated or selfconstructed by renters and, in most cases, did not meet the standard with a lack of basic housing infrastructure and have poor housing facilities. Tenants are inconvenienced when facilities such as toilets, bathrooms, pipes and kitchens are not available or are not located in the house. The results also agree with the findings of Danso-Wiredu (2018: 16), Addo (2016: 23), and Owusu (2010: 9), which revealed that basic facilities in low-income areas are highly inadequate in Agbogbloshie, old Fadama, James Town as well as Sabon Zongo and other vulnerable communities in Accra, making life difficult for renters in such areas.

Waste disposal
Results in Table 3   Cooking in open spaces (see Figure  3) makes it difficult to prepare food, especially when it is raining. The vast majority of households use firewood and charcoal for cooking. This finding, which is not different from that in most of the smaller towns and rural areas, shows how the forest vegetation is under threat in the country.
The results are similar to the studies by Ofori (2020) and Amenyah & Fletcher (2013)  Residents in these areas mostly resort to buying water from private water venders, which is expensive. Bad conditions or complete absence of sanitation facilities such as toilets, bathrooms, good drinking water, dustbins, and containers for waste collection, among others, make the sanitation situation a serious challenge for community members. This has significantly influenced the behaviour of some residents as they tend to dump their refuse in nearby drains or open spaces, due to the non-availability of dustbins or failure by the District Assembly to empty waste containers. Poor sanitation or lack of sanitation and no proper garbage disposal are health risks for tenants (De Vet et al., 2013;Mohammed & Williams, 2013: 1152.   Graham et al.'s (2006) findings, which disclose that people who live in overcrowded accommodation or housing with shared facilities put themselves at greater risk of getting infectious diseases.

Quality of rental housing
Results in Table 3 show that respondents rated the quality of rental housing in the three study communities as 'bad' to 'very bad'. Although 40.3% of the respondents from Akrobi rated their houses as 'good', respondents rated 80.8% of the houses in Jensoso as 'bad' (46.8%) or 'very bad' (34%); in Zongo, 75% of the houses were rated either 'bad' (40.5%) or 'very bad' (34.5%). Respondents stated that these poor-quality structures cannot protect tenants from a range of hazards such as harsh weather conditions, thus posing a danger to their lives. Adu et al. (2016) confirm these findings, which reveal that low-income residents in the Wa Municipality who reside in mud houses are living in perpetual fear of their rooms collapsing on them during the rainy season.

Tenants' coping strategies
In their quest to survive in the midst of the challenges, tenants have adopted a number of interventions to cope with their problems. Although some of the coping strategies are life threatening, the respondents can only manage the situation. Table 4 shows an almost equal distribution for the coping measures adopted by respondents with manage the situation (29.4%), conversion of their porches and kitchens to bedrooms for other family members (25.3%); others also decide to allow their children, especially teenagers, to sleep with their friends and families in town (20%).

CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Although housing is a basic necessity of life, over half of the population in Ghana lives in poor housing conditions, where they have hardly any or no access to adequate sanitary facilities, household facilities, and community infrastructure. This study set out to assess how poor housing affects low-income renters and the various coping mechanisms they adopt, in order to survive their challenges. The study focused on Wenchi Municipality in the Bono region of Ghana. This study is unique, as many studies on low-income housing in the country focus on cities and large towns, whereas this study investigated the situation from the perspectives of a smaller town, Wenchi.
The study theoretically employed Morris and Winter's housing adjustment theory, with key findings from the three communities under study have postulated a great relationship between the set-up of the three communities and the theory as used in other countries. The theory explains that the nature of a society sometimes determines its inhabitants. For instance, well-organised communities with proper securities and good environmental conditions sometimes set a standard for themselves and these standards do not give allow people who fall below such standards to settle there. On the other hand, communities with weak infrastructure, poor environmental and sanitation conditions relax their restrictions to entry and exit in most cases. More importantly, when the entry is fluid, it allows alterations to the existing housing make-ups to suit the needs of household members. This is what the findings revealed in the study communities in a smaller town in Ghana.
The study revealed that the types of housing available for rent in the communities were compound houses, compound single storey, compound multi-storey, detached and semi-detached. The results from the study indicated that the compound houses were the most predominant form of rent among the tenants in the communities. Based on this, the communities identified for the study were classified into three groups, namely indigenous society, migrants and the mixed or middle-income society. Key results from the field have established that compound housing is the most common housing type in the three communities; the traditional old mud housing system was common in the Jensoso community, which is the indigenous community. Evidence from the field attested to the fact that tenants in this community live in fear, due to the poor physical nature of their houses. On the other hand, kiosks and all forms of makeshift structures and uncompleted buildings were also commonly found in the Zongo community, which is a migrant community. The common challenges of the housing system in these two communities were inadequate sanitation and poor household facilities. Although the housing morphology in Akrobi (the mixed community) was better than that in the other two communities, there were still pockets of poor houses in that area. The study also found that tenants were primarily vulnerable, because their landlords, as property owners, possess tremendous power over them. Another factor that had an effect on tenants was no reciprocal value for money paid for rent. Although they expressed their concern of not getting value for the money they paid for the rooms, they often did not have much to say. This was compounded by the absence of the Rent and Control Department in the Municipality.
Results from the field have confirmed that, due to housing deficits and other factors, tenants were unable to afford decent and affordable housing for their families. These housing constraints and deficiencies compelled the vast majority of tenants in the study communities to seek alternative solutions to their housing problems. Mediation factors such as changes made based on income levels of tenants; alteration of buildings; dependent on community public facilities such as toilet and shower; cooking outside using available open spaces at the compound and turning porches into bedrooms at night were some of the coping strategies used by tenants to affirm the right to the city of all dwellers. The study confirmed the findings in the literature on the challenges low-income renters face in Ghanaian cities and large towns. This also adds to the existing knowledge that smaller towns experience similar problems with different alternative solutions. The study made the following policy recommendations. The Municipality should establish and strengthen the Rent Control, which is mandated to implement and monitor the rent sector so that it can implement The Rent Act of 1963 and the Rent Control Law of 1986's guidelines on the housing rental system in Ghana to protect the interest of tenants. Prominent among these guidelines is the need for landlords/ladies to provide toilet and other household facilities for their tenants. Apart from providing an enabling environment to the private sector to build houses on a commercial basis (these are usually beyond the reach of the poor), the state should build social housing for the poor in the form of decent compound housing.