Margaret Rugadya

Can Remittances Influence the Tenure and Quality of Housing in Uganda?: Remittances, Housing Tenure and Quality in Uganda Margaret Rugadya

Policy makers have not progressed on how to improve housing tenure and quality using remittances, because of varied and conflicting conclusions drawn by different authors in literature. This analysis argues that it is possible to create incentives for the targeted use of remittances for advancement of tenure and quality of housing. From a pooled-cross section analysis on sample survey data from the Uganda National Household Survey 2005/2006 (UNHS III) and 2009/2010 (UNHS IV), results show that due to significant positive correlations between remittances and the attributes of housing tenure (own and rent) and housing quality (access to welfare amenities and physical condition of housing), remittances can be conditioned. However, the cash value of remittances to Uganda is too low to advance housing tenure and quality for recipient households. Even if migrants made housing their number one option for investment, the housing sector is not adequately organized to tap into the potential of remittances flows.