Abdo Khal

Okaz

If one were to look at a map of the Kingdom and take into account the country’s population and GDP, he would have a hard time believing that a country spread out over nearly 2 million square kilometers is experiencing a housing crisis. Furthermore, he will have a hard time understanding how we still have a housing problem despite spending huge sums of money, far exceeding the original estimate several times over, in the sector.



It is indeed unfortunate that despite several years of investment, bad planning, management and corruption have left us no closer to solving the problem. Official statistics show that, after taking into account all of the housing projects built by the government, land grants and loans from the Real Estate Development Fund, a shockingly high 80 percent of citizens still do not own their own homes. This matter has naturally caused great concern to both citizens and the state and it also shows that all of the above projects failed to take population growth into consideration.



Decision after decision was taken to fix the housing crisis. First came the decision to establish the Ministry of Housing which, although is supposed to provide houses to citizens, has largely proven incapable of carrying out its task. According to its highest ranking officials, the ministry is unable to solve the housing crisis due to a scarcity of land. Anyone following the housing crisis is baffled by such reasoning.



The recent decision to transfer vast tracts of land from the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs to the Ministry of Housing gives rise to many questions, most important of which is: What will be the immediate effects of this decision? This is a question that emanates from fears that the previous decisions failed to solve the crisis and by merely changing ownership of land from one ministry to another with no changes to the administrative system for land transactions, the Ministry of Housing will again fail to accomplish its task.



Under the current stifling bureaucracy that makes it impossible to make such initiatives a success, the transfer of ownership of lands from one ministry to another will take several years. Additional time will be required to figure out who is most deserving of these plots of land and finally, the matter will require the blessings of the Ministry of Finance. While all of this is going on, real estate prices will increase, as will our population.



I think every citizen’s biggest fear is that after waiting several years, the Ministry of Housing will come out and say that it is unable to fulfill its tasks. Merely changing ownership of land to the Ministry of Housing is not enough unless concrete measures are taken to address the bureaucracy that plagues our administrative system.