With the goal of spurring the housing market, the government has formulated strategies to regulate the price of construction materials in the local markets by, for example, lowering import duties on construction materials. The Kingdom also has programs that encourage more private investment in the national real-estate market. There are also several schemes for the distribution of housing plots to the citizens who wish to build their own houses.
In the early 1970s as the Kingdom’s gross national product was rising steeply, the government began implementing these housing programs. The Real Estate Development Fund was created, which doles out loans to landowners to build homes. The government also disbursed land plots to the landless.
Years passed and the government realized that these programs, however successful they were in providing homes to the middle class, were doing little for the poor. In 2002 Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, who was then the crown prince, ordered the development of a national policy toward low-income housing.
The King Abdullah Foundation for Housing was set up and has since made considerable headway in providing housing to the poor. Several other charitable projects, such as the Prince Sultan Project for Housing and Prince Salman Project for Housing, were also launched.
While these programs have helped, it has been since recognized that retired public officials needed help because so many of them were spending large portions of their pensions on rent. The urgency of the situation made the government come up with a new strategy for resolving the housing problem with due consideration for all economic classes in the country.
The government ordered the Public Pension Agency (PPA) last year to launch a housing loan scheme for the retired officials in collaboration with a local bank. The scheme called Masakin, however, benefited only government employees set to retire, those under the age of 50. The retired employees from the social insurance and private sectors did not, unfortunately, get the benefit of the new Masakin scheme.
Doesn’t it mean that the old employees aged around 60 years, who had served the country loyally all their life, are to be left out on the streets without any homes of their own?
I ask concerned authorities to remove this age limit so that all retired employees regardless of their age can have their homes. The bank can introduce new conditions to guarantee the repayment of the loan even if the aged man dies. The house constructed with the loan could be hypothecated to the bank. The will of the man should include the settlement of the loan in the event of his death.
