The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has welcomed regulatory inspections of private student hostels after years of unchecked fee hikes, with the Rent Control Department now moving to verify complaints of arbitrary pricing at tertiary institutions across the country.
NUGS president Rashid Ibrahim told the Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday that a union petition triggered the intervention, prompting inspectors to conduct on-site assessments rather than wait for formal processes to resolve the matter.
The Education Ministry is also reportedly constituting a committee to examine hostel fee hikes nationwide, a development Ibrahim described as recognition that student accommodation has evolved into a major policy crisis.
“Students are now paying several times more for accommodation than for school fees,” Ibrahim noted.
He argued that Ghana’s rent regulations already grant authorities sufficient power to act, but those provisions have gathered dust for decades. The Rent Control Department has proposed professional valuation of hostels as a mechanism to standardise and justify pricing, a step the union supports as a path toward transparency.
Ibrahim warned, however, that regulation alone will not resolve the underlying problem. He called on government to scale up public-private housing partnerships and commit to building more student accommodation as the only durable solution.
Legal and policy analyst Austin Kwabena Brako-Powers reinforced that view, telling TV3’s Big Issues programme that Ghana’s rent crisis is fundamentally a housing supply problem rather than a legal one. He said successive governments bear responsibility for allowing affordable housing initiatives to become, in practice, expensive developments that the intended beneficiaries cannot afford.
Brako-Powers proposed amending the current six-month advance rent cap to allow landlords to collect up to one year’s rent in advance, arguing the existing limit no longer reflects construction costs or economic conditions. He also urged tax incentives for compliant landlords, saying rewards will drive better adherence than penalties alone.
