Impose taxes on empty completed housing units in cities to spark off access—UN
To curb the observed high number of unoccupied residential and office buildings in major cities due to high cost of leasing and renting, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Rights to Adequate Housing, Ms Leilani Farha, has urged federal government to impose taxes on unoccupied or vacant homes across the country.
She further argued that the taxes will among other things, curb corruption, money laundering and raise more funds to build houses for ordinary Nigerians.
According to the UN official, this is time for the Federal Government to develop appropriate strategies to deal with the situation because most of the unoccupied houses or estates were proceeds of money laundering and other illicit funds.
She argued that due to the fact that the owners did not get the money in a genuine way, they are ready to leave their building unoccupied without losing anything because they were not built with loans from banks but proceeds of illicit flows which cost the owners almost nothing.
Farha made the remark while addressing a press conference in Abuja on her preliminary findings after a 10-day fact-finding mission to Nigeria, saying “One of the strategies should include imposing tax on vacant homes that would then be used to generate affordable housing for poor Nigerians.”
