Government Roll Out National Rental Assistance Scheme To Ease Rent Problems.

In order to provide lower-income households and young people in Ghana with safe, affordable, and secure rental housing, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia on Tuesday unveiled the National Rental Assistance Scheme (NRAS) in Accra.

The Scheme will offer rent advance loans to qualified Ghanaians, age 18 and older, with verifiable and regular income. In order to match the length of the rent, the beneficiary will repay these loans on a monthly basis, up to 30% of his or her household income. For the purpose of assisting applicants, the government has allotted GHS30 million in initial funding.

Before being extended to the other 10 regions, the Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, Ashanti, Bono East, and Northern regions will be covered by the first phase of the Scheme’s implementation. Rent Masters Ghana Limited, a company in the private sector, was hired to manage the Scheme and is in charge of its day-to-day operations.

In addition to handling customer application processes, the business will also pay rent advances directly to landlords and prepare and submit periodic reports to the Project Management Committee on the Scheme’s progress. In order to satisfy the interests of both landlords and tenants, it will also act as a bridge.

According to Vice President Bawumia, previous administration had implemented housing regulations designed to broaden people’s access to a variety of housing choices.

To address the market imbalances in the rental housing market, those efforts, which were primarily focused on home ownership services, did not have the desired effect. Across the world, rental housing was a crucial component of a healthy housing market and facilitated greater access to affordable housing options, especially for young people and low-to-middle income households.

The Vice President stated that the Akufo-Addo led Administration had been working toward providing citizens with adequate shelter as a people-focused government, which was a key component of the government’s development objectives to address the issues relating to the housing sector, particularly rental housing. “When I visited the Rent Control Department in July 2020, I observed the overall importance of the rental housing market in our effort to increase access to housing options,” he said.

“I reiterated government plans to increase effectiveness and efficiency, and I also reviewed the law governing rent management in the nation to make it more current with changing trends. He claimed that the issue of landlords requesting two years’ worth of rent in advance prevented many people, particularly young people, from accessing rental housing.

Vice President Bawumia stated that the e government began planning to introduce a new program in 2020 to close the knowledge and financial gap between tenants and landlords in order to address the challenge. These steps would improve tenants. These concepts were given expression in the New Patriotic Party’s 2020 Manifesto and later in the federal budget.

As a result, the Government established the National Rental Assistance Scheme as a policy intervention to address the issue, acting through the Ministry of Works and Housing.

In collaboration with the private sector, the Scheme would offer qualified Ghanaians low-interest loans so they could pay their rent in advance. Direct payments into landlord accounts would be made for the rent advance loans. In terms of the nation’s housing industry and rent management, the government, according to Dr. Bawumia, has made significant progress.

Acting through the Ministry of Works and Housing, it had submitted a Rent Bill to Parliament for consideration and passage, intended to replace the current Rent Act 1963 (Act 220). When made into law, he claimed, it would raise the Rent Control Department’s service delivery standards. He commended the sector’s minister, Mr. Francis Asenso-Boakye, for taking the initiative to ensure the initiative’s implementation, which would streamline the rental sub-sector in terms of housing supply and demand.

“I am especially thrilled to learn of the eligibility criteria that have been adopted in the selection of beneficiaries for the Scheme,” he stated.
The data generated from the implementation of the Scheme will aid the government’s efforts to increase our revenue stream through the improved collection of rent tax, so it not only supports the call for synchronizing all platforms with the National Identification System. “.

The Vice President claimed that the national identification system, a digital property address system, and mobile money interoperability—which had essentially given all eligible Ghanaians a bank account—had made the introduction of the NRAS possible. He continued that these systems substantially closed the gap between landlords, tenants, and credit providers.

The Vice President commanded the Ministry of Works and Housing not to shirk its oversight and supervisory duties for the Scheme’s successful implementation. Through (www . nras . gov . gh), one could submit an online application to the Scheme for support.