Urban Land Acquisition and Housing Practices in Bahir Dar City and Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Adequate supply of land is fundamental for housing delivery and property development process of urban residents. In Ethiopia, due to high rate of urbanization, housing shortage is becoming the challenging issue for urban areas. The goal of this study was to examine major bottlenecks of urban land acquisition for housing practices in Bahir Dar City and Debreberhan Town in a comparative basis. To achieve the intended goal, the study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches, based on the descriptive research design. A household survey was done on 240 households from each of case study areas in a random selection in one hand, and from 20 key informants interviewees (government officials from land and housing departments, and kebele administrators) on the other. Accordingly, the researchers came to the conclusion that urbanization, land demand and supply imbalances, high land prices, municipal institutional capacity issues, the land lease policy and lack of good governance in the land administration were the main challenges and issues that hampered land acquisition in the case areas. It is found that the only option to acquire urban land is addressed through either auction (totally exclude the poor people) or allotment (only permitted to the housing cooperatives).