Eveline de Klerk
Walvis Bay-The National Housing Enterprise (NHE), established in 1993 to promote home ownership by Namibians, only built 2,689 houses in 24 years in the entire Erongo Region, which has a waiting list of over 27,000 aspiring homeowners.
NHE was created to provide housing solutions to alleviate the national housing need.
The institution’s waiting list for the region stands at 27,632. The overall national demand for houses, as per the NHE waiting list, stood at 87,473 on September 30.
Walvis Bay alone has 18,790 applicants, while more than 50,000 of the town’s residents live in shacks, with most of them registered on the council and NHE waiting list.
Active clients of NHE who are servicing home loans from the company currently total 4,719 countrywide, of whom 837 are in the Erongo Region.
This is according to figures provided by NHE CEO Gisbertus Mukulu last week during an information session at Walvis Bay.
Mukulu indicated that the demand for houses also increased in other towns in the region, with Swakopmund having 7,702 residents on the waiting list.
“In Henties Bay we have 339 applicants, Arandis 147, Omaruru 315, while Karibib and Usakos have 46 and 29 respectively. Khorixas and Outjo, which also fall under the western region, have 88 and 167 applicants, respectively,” he said.
He said that serviced land still remains a challenge for the institution that currently owns 416 serviced plots and 2,981 unserviced plots countrywide.
“However,we have been offered 837 unserviced plots by various councils in the country,” he said.
According to Mukulu, the Karibib Town Council offered the company 71 serviced plots, while the Walvis Bay council offered 374 unserviced plots.
Mukulu said that NHE does not have any unoccupied houses at Walvis Bay. “As you all are aware our mandate was revoked in 2015 already and our new mandate is only to allocated houses. However, we should not forget that the need for housing is now more critical than ever before and calls for a collective approach by all entities. We should all intervene to address the housing shortage in the country,” he said.