Abstract

Africa is currently the fastest urbanizing continent in the world. The contemporary urban development in Africa is faced with multi-scale and diverse challenges one of which is housing deprivation. A cross-sectional survey research design involving a stratified sampling technique was utilized in this study. The indicators of housing deprivation were measured based on the headcount approach, the percentage of persons in the population living in dwellings without basic requirements such as the structural aspect of housing, the characteristics of roofs, walls, floor, access to quality water, electricity, sanitation, and habitability. An equal weight of 1 was assigned to each dimension in a nested fashion. The result reveals that (204) 52.7% of the respondents are males, while (183) 47.3% are females. Most of the respondents (292)75.5% are aware of housing deprivation, while (281) 72.6% of respondents stated that there is a relationship between urbanization and housing deprivation in the city of Yenagoa. The result of the Pearson Product Moment Correlation reveals a coefficient of (r = 0.660), which means a strong positive relationship between urbanization and housing deprivation at a 0.01 significance level. This result implies that urbanization because of pull factors is one of the principal determinants of housing deprivation in Yenagoa. Lack of decent housing facilities contributed to the development of squatter settlements and with the ever-increasing rate of urbanization, it becomes imperative for the government to plan for the development of the housing sector and provide affordable low-cost housing estate, especially within Yenagoa city to redress the issue of poor housing.

Key Words: Urbanization, Housing Deprivation, Headcount Approach, Stratified Sampling, Yenagoa City, Nigeria