The private sector has registered a faster growth rate than the government sector in the area of housing. The private sector also provides the infrastructure such as asphalted streets with sidewalks and streetlights around housing plots, though the space and driveway of each plot may be smaller than those of the government plots. Private investors are compelled to provide all the basic amenities as an essential prerequisite for government approval for the housing scheme — apart from the obvious advantage of fetching a higher price for the plots despite covering a minimum area. Notwithstanding the mushrooming private schemes, the housing crisis in big cities continues unabated and it is likely to spill over to smaller cities as well in the near future. There are several reasons for the crisis to become worse as time passes.
The spiraling land price is one; the prices make it beyond the means of most citizens to buy the land and build a house. So they must look for accommodation to rent — a flat or perhaps a villa and it is invariably a scramble because the demand for housing is far greater than the supply. At the same time, many people who have received government land are not keen on building a house because of the lack of basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity. As for those who have begun to build, progress is slow. They complain that the money they have committed to the task is insufficient for constructing and furnishing — even though they have been granted loans by the Real Estate Development Fund.
The lack of money, unfortunately, is the major reason for the rapidly increasing shortage of housing. An average citizen who manages to buy the land will have little left for building after taking care of his family’s food, rent and other requirements — to say nothing of his constant repayment of loans for marriage, furniture and a car.
Apart from rural migration to urban areas, the housing problem is further exacerbated by the practice of several landlords to convert flats, which were earlier rented on an annual basis, into furnished flats for daily, weekly or monthly rents. Short-term renting, apparently, is more lucrative than the long-term variety. Some flats in cities are leased on a month-to-month basis as this enables the owner to charge very high rentals at special times such as during school vacations and during the Eids when the tourist demand for flats and villas is very high. The practice of offering short-term rentals is also attributed to the landlords’ fears about some tenants’ defaulted payments, refusal to vacate or unwillingness to repair the damage they have caused. Such fears could be eliminated by including all the relevant conditions in the contract agreement and demanding a refundable deposit from the tenant as a reserve against damage to the building.
Urgent measures must be taken to solve the problem. The authorities must encourage those who have been granted government plots to complete construction without delay by providing as soon as possible the basic amenities required by the new buildings. Investors in the private sector should offer houses to low-income groups with easy installment payments while tenants should abide by the contractual obligations without fail and should protect the premises.
