Shelter is a basic need and a right of very individual. Therefore its provision should not
only be looked at in terms of quantity as is often the norm but to take into consideration
its quality in terms of adequate protection, sustainability, comfort, ventilation and lighting
amongst others.Ghana’s housing backlog quantitative is now estimated at over a million
and even more in terms of quality by experts. Various attempts to cut down on this has
not yielded much due to the high cost of imported (conventional)building materials
especially and contractors over dependence on these products
Brick which has been proven over thousands of years to be of superior quality and
affordable in terms of total life cycle cost of a building has not been used as much as
alternative building material (0.6% out of total houses are built in bricks as against 75%
for cement /sandcrete blocks) due to various problems such as cost of production and
construction, lack of skilled labour and availability of design data as well as government
support.
This paper therefore seeks to: analyse the shelter situation of the country, especially in
the urban areas ,identify and analyse the major problems to affordable housing ,discuss
findings and results on field studies/surveys ,make proposals for change and an action
plan to promote the use of single leaf brick construction in single storey housing.