97 RENT CONTROL, PROFITABILITY AND SUPPLY of stay to date. In addition, capital raised through the recent practice of demanding rent advances, is allowing some landlords to carry out repairs between tenancies -- either from the advance or by asking for extra to cover ranovations.

Quite apart from rent control, the deterioration problem is compounded by the multi-ownership of family houses where ownership in common under a caretaker/lineage head requires lineage members occupying tvl' house to share in the cost of maintenance. This appears to be a classic "prisoners' dilemma" problem (Robinson, 1979). Since rent does not cover maintenance costs, the different "owners in common" have little incentive to invest in maintenance of a common property, especially when no kudos are traditionally attached to part ownership of a building. Status depends on completing a new building rather than maintaining or rehabilitating an old one (Tipple, 1983 and 1984a).

In addition to the fact that units, not their quality, confer status, the control regime makes no distinction between houses with no services and those with services shared by many households. In order to benefit from an increase in rent, the landlord must make his rooms "self-contained" so that each household has exclusive use of water supply, sanitation, kitchen, and bathroom.

Apart from fulfilling the demands of the building regulations (and enforcement has been very lax for years), a landlord has very little incentive to fit water supply and sanitation, kitchen and bathroom, into his house. To increase the rent, full conversion to self-contained units is necessary, for only then can the improvement costs be passed through to the tenant by means of increased rents. Therefore, why should a landlord fit a water pipe to the house, or improve the latrine from a bucket to an aqua-privy or a ventilated indirect pit, when these will be shared facilities?

A similar question arises with qualitative improvements to the structure of rooms with shared facilities. As it would make no difference to the rent, what incentive can a landlord have for fitting ceilings or other improvements or repairing the fabric of the house?

# Net Effects on SuRpRj

What is the net effect of all of the above? While some starts have undoubtedly been forgone, neither have starts dropped to zero, as might be expected with such extreme controls. However, the current rent control policies also have effects on the quality cListribution of houses. We have macro evidence on the number of units of different type, and micro evidence on the quality of the units.

Figure 6.1 shows that the number of houses has grown over time but at different rates in different sectors. The trend for the high cost sector to grow faster than others noted from the 1960 to 1981 period by Boapeah and Tipple (1983) has been somewhat stemmed in the 1981 to 1988 period as the indigenous sector appears to have kept pace (both have grown by 10 percent over the 8 years). The total number of houses has not, however, kept pace with population growth in either the short or medium terms; while there was one house for every 20 people in 1960 (1960 Census of Population), there was only one per 29 in 1980 and one per 32 people in 1988.