The State Housing Company (SHC) is gradually bouncing back from years of mismanagement, indebtedness, inability to pay workers and lack of control over its land assets.
Established in 1956 as the Gold Coast Housing Corporation, the company, which struggled to construct a single house in 2015, is set to deliver 100 affordable houses by the end of this year.
The Managing Director of SHC, Kwabena Ampofo Appiah, told the Ghanaian Times in an interview after a tour of the Legacy Court currently under construction at Adenta in Accra that the company, in less than 5 years, had constructed about 1,000 affordable houses.
He said SHC was living its mandate of providing affordable homes and estate management services to government agencies, local authorities, developers and private home buyers.
Through prudent management of its assets, he said the company had become a competitive player in the real estate industry and had regained its status as the “the nation’s number one builder”
SHC adopted a commercial approach to deliver competitive property offers and practical maintenance support to its clients and stakeholders, he said.
Mr Appiah said the management of SHC was repositioning the company to enable it deliver 100 houses in all 16 regions every year to address the housing situation in the country.
The Minister of Public Enterprises, Mr Joseph Cudjoe, who toured the facility, commended the management of SHC for making the company a profitable government enterprise.
He said SHC had managed to reclaim about 2,725 acres of land nationwide and had created a land bank to construct more affordable houses for Ghanaians.
Mr said his ministry would commit to playing its oversight role over the various state-owned entities to make them profitable and support the growth of the country’s economy.
The Legacy Court project by the SHC is made up of 37 units of 3 and 4 bedroom apartments on a five acre land. When completed, the facility will have a playground and other commercial facilities.