Inside Lagos informal settlements where rooms rent for as little as N5,000 a month
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Residents of Ajegunle's crowded informal settlements say the real barrier to decent housing is not the monthly rent but the large upfront lump sum that conventional Lagos tenancies demand.
In Tunkarimu, one of Ajegunle's crowded informal settlements in Lagos, the day starts before 5:30am. The first sounds are not of traffic or commerce but of residents scrambling to use one of the few bathrooms serving the occupants of 16 rooms, with those heading to work racing against time.
A resident who identified himself as Adeolu said bathing in the morning is a nightmare because the bathroom is small and shared by many people. He said the queue can disrupt the day's plans, and that the situation worsens when the only well used for washing dries up because of the number of people it serves daily.
Inside the settlement, such inconveniences are part of everyday life. Residents pay about N10,000 a month for a room, with affordable accommodation coming with overcrowding, shared facilities, limited privacy, poor sanitation and the constant anxiety that comes with living in an informal settlement. In the nearby Tolu area, rooms on Wowo Street go for N5,000 to N10,000 a month, where 61-year-old Basil Owunka's family of eight lives in a single room.
For Lagos' poorest residents, the report found that the biggest obstacle to decent housing is not necessarily the monthly rent but the upfront payment. A conventional apartment may require an annual rent running into thousands of naira, in addition to agency, legal and other charges, which is nearly impossible for casual workers, petty traders, cleaners, porters and low-income artisans whose incomes arrive daily or weekly.
Residents said the low rents come with a difficult bargain: they trade comfort for affordability, privacy for overcrowding and security of tenure for the assurance of somewhere to sleep at the end of the day. One resident, Basil, who works as a labourer at a sand dredging site at Tin-Can Island, said the problem is rarely a lack of willingness to pay rent but the upfront cost demanded by property owners, which he said is worsened by agents he blamed for pushing up accommodation prices in the area.