43 THE HOUSING MARKET OF KUMASI

# B, Household Survey Data

At the start of the project, a survey of housing stock and household characteristics for Kumasi in 1980 conducted by Graham Tipple, with additional material collected by Samuel K. Afrane was in hand (Further analysis and discussion of the findings can be found in Boapeah and Tipple, 1983; and Tipple, 1984a, 1984b and 1987a). It was decided to conduct a further survey of approximately the same size, and -sing as many of the same houses as records of the 1980 survey permitted so that sLme sense of changes since 1980 could be gained in this tightly controlled rental market.

As in 1980, students of planning at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi acted as enumerators under the guidance of Mr. Afrane, a lecturer in the Department of Planning. A survey to count the houses in the city, exactly similar to that carried out by Boapeah in 1981 (Boapeah, 1981; and Boapeah and Tipple, 1983) was unsuccessful in 1986, for reasons beyond the writers' control, but was successfully carried out in 1988 collecting data for completions 1981 to 1985 and 1986 to 1988. The new sur.vey gave an opportunity to check the 1981 data which was found to be slightly in error. The number of houses extant in 1980 was corrected from 20,600 to 21,000.

The main survey was carried out between late April and mid-July, 1986 in 28 arias of the city. The sample was based on a random sample of houses within all the main low income residential areas of the city plus areas chosen to represent the high cost areas and the peripheral towns and villages (The sampling procedure for areas is discussed in detail in Tipple, 1984a). Within the residential areas, the sampling unit is the house which is defined, for the privately de-eloped areas of the city as a structure designed for or used as a residential building. In the government-built areas, a house is defined as a structure originally designed to be used as a single dwelling. Within the house, all heads of households, or their representatives were interviewed. A household is defined as a group of people who normally share the same housekeeping arrangements. Interviews were successfully conducted with 1414 households in 279 houses.

In addition to the graphs and charts presented in this chapter, there are a number of supporting tables in the data appendix at the end of the paper.

# C. Kumasi's Housing Stock

The housing stock in Kamasi consists predominantly of compound houses. The 1986 survey shows that 40 percent of the houses are single story compounds (mainly in the indigenous sector) with a mean of 12 rooms, while 16 percent are multi-story compounds (mainly the tenement sector) with a mean of 17 rooms. Together these contain 75 percent of the rooms in the city. The remainder are detached houses (24 percent with a mean of 7 rooms) and semi-detached or terraced houses mainly in the government built sector and with means of 4 rooms (mainly in high cost and government sectors). Approximately 4160 one to five roomed houses have been provided by government as rental housing in its own estates. Most of the houses have been sold to their tenants over the last twenty years. Kwakye-Safo (1981) reported that about 60 percent of houses formerly under the