Federal Housing Cooperation to increase rental fees, roll out new apartments

The newly restructured Federal Housing Cooperation is working to evaluate the over 17,000 houses it owns in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. After that occurs the organization plans to increase rental prices. Currently the Corporation rents a single residential house for a minimum monthly price of 40 birr to a maximum of USD 7,360 a month for embassies and diplomatic missions.
The increase is due to the increasing market price. Residents have the option of fully or partially sharing the price for maintenance on the house. Kibrom Gebremedhin, who handles communication for the Corporation told Capital the revision began years ago and went through some bottlenecks due to restructuring at the Corporation but that they have almost finished the revision work.
“I believe we will announce the new rental fee soon after we finish revisions,” he said.
He added that the Corporation is in the finishing stages of taking a census to identify who lives in the houses.
“We are in the finishing stages of the counting process and we have found that some people are living in the houses illegally as they have no contract. Others are making illegal modifications to the homes so we are going to take legal action if we discover these things are happening.”
Kibrom says the Corporation also plans to build 3,200 houses in Addis Ababa this year. They will be 9 to 21 stories high buildings and will be rented to government employees.
The homes will be built on 14.4 hectares of land and will consist of around 70 apartments in Aware, Gofa, Ledeta, Adwa, Tore Hailoch and Balderas.
This will be the first time the Corporation has built new apartments since the downfall of the Derg regime.
“We have prepared some land to begin construction, it has been difficult to relocate people from the homes in places we plan to build on. Some people are positive and understand our vision but others are fighting relocation,” he said.
The apartments will be residential and commercial units and will have basements, parking and social service areas.
The Corporation was initially established in 1993 and re-established in March 2017 with five branches and a capital of 33.2 billion birr.