Members of the Tenants Association of Ghana have expressed gratitude to the government for the promise to revise and amend the current rent law and institute the National Rental Assistance Scheme (NRAS).

The Association expressed its appreciation when its leadership paid a courtesy call on Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia at the Jubilee House on Wednesday, 2 September 2020.

The issues of housing and cost of rent, as well as, regulations governing them are of great concern to majority of Ghanaians.

The NRAS, therefore, is a campaign promise by President Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to provide low-interest loans to eligible Ghanaians to enable them pay rent advance.

The NRAS will be seeded with GHS100 million.

Dr Bawumia added that the government’s housing policy would also place an emphasis on social housing for the poor.

Speaking at the NPP manifesto launch on Saturday, 22 August 2020, Dr Bawumia said that in his estimation, the problem of rent has persisted because “there is a market failure between what the tenant wants and what the landlord wants and this is why the government has decided to come in and bridge this market failure by setting up the National Rental Assistance Scheme”.

Dr Bawumia explained that “under this scheme, if you have a job and we can deduct regularly from your income, the National Rental Assistance Scheme will give you a loan to pay your [rent] allowance but we are paying this not to you but to your landlord and it will be deducted monthly as you’d normally pay, so, we are bringing this”.

“You need to have a formal employment”, he clarified, “which will allow us or someone who will guarantee so that you can pay, but it is very important that we address this and we are going to be putting in place GHS100 million for the National Rental Assistance Scheme and work with the private sector to crowd in more so that we can get this done and release a lot of people of the burden.”