The Rent Control Department, and how to actually use it

Ghana has a government body whose job is landlord and tenant disputes, its mediation is free, and most tenants have never heard of it or assume it does nothing.

Both halves of that are worth correcting. It is not a court and it will not police your tenancy — but it is the one place where an excessive rent advance or an unlawful eviction becomes somebody official’s problem rather than only yours.

What it is

The Rent Control Department, under the Ministry of Works and Housing, administers the Rent Act 1963 (Act 220) and mediates between landlords and tenants. It has offices across Greater Accra.

— Rent Control Department, in the glossary

What it can do

• Mediate an excessive rent advance. Section 25(5) of the Rent Act makes it an offence to demand or receive more than 6 months in advance on a monthly tenancy. Landlords in Accra routinely ask for 12.
• Hear an unlawful eviction. A landlord cannot simply change the locks or put your things on the street.
• Rule on a rent increase that you believe is unreasonable.
• Register a tenancy agreement, which should be lodged within 30 days and almost never is.
• Issue a recovery-of-possession process for a landlord who wants the property back lawfully.

What it cannot do

Being straight about this is the difference between using it well and being disappointed by it.

It is under-resourced. It exists, it takes complaints, it mediates. It cannot proactively police thousands of private tenancies, and it will not find out about your landlord unless you tell it.

It cannot make housing appear. The reason the illegal advance persists is that demand has outrun supply in Accra for sixty years, and a mediation service does not change that arithmetic.

— How Accra grew

It moves at the speed of an under-resourced office. Bring patience and bring paper.

The thing nobody does, and should

Register the tenancy agreement. It costs little, it takes one visit, and it creates an independent record of what you paid, for what period, and on what terms.

That record is worth almost nothing on the day you sign and worth a very great deal on the day the landlord says the advance covered a different period from the one you remember. The overwhelming majority of Accra tenancies are never lodged, which is precisely why so many disputes come down to two people’s recollection.

— Your tenancy agreement — Tenancy agreement template

What to bring to a complaint

Go with documents, not a story:

• The tenancy agreement, if there is one
• Receipts for every payment, or bank and MoMo records showing them
• Photographs of the property’s condition, dated
• Any written exchanges — WhatsApp counts, and screenshots are accepted more readily than people expect
• The landlord’s full name and address, not just a phone number
• Your Ghana Card

The single most useful thing you can do before any of this is need to happen: get a receipt for every cedi, every time. A payment you cannot evidence is a payment that did not happen.

— Rent advance receipt template

Before you escalate

Mediation works best where the relationship is not yet broken. In order:

1. Ask, in writing. A WhatsApp message creates a record and often resolves it.
2. Say what the Act says, calmly. A surprising number of landlords do not know the advance limit is law rather than custom, and the ones who do often prefer not to have it raised formally.
3. Then go to Rent Control. Once it is a complaint, the relationship changes — which is a real cost if you intend to stay.

— The rent advance, and the law on it — Housing and land scams — Your rights as an employee — Ghana’s regulators, and who to complain to

Contact details and office addresses are not published here: the department’s offices move and this site does not publish what it cannot keep verified. The Ministry of Works and Housing lists current offices, and any Accra district assembly can point you at the nearest one.