Kuwait seeks to meet mounting housing demand

In shadow of Kuwait's population growth, housing projects turn quite significant to meet mounting citizens' demand for plots of land or finished units.
The Kuwaiti Government has devoted particular attention to housing care for the citizens since the early 50s of the past century. Since 1954, the Government has been building residential units, including apartment houses, making them available for the nationals on equal basis.
Kuwait's housing care law stipulates that each married citizen has the right to apply for a housing unit, a land plot or an interest-free housing loan, thus a large number of Kuwaiti families has acquired houses with easy terms in various regions of the country.
Every married citizen, awaiting his turn for housing, is granted KD 150 per month during this period of time, as an allotment to support him for renting a house temporarily.
The construction council, established, in 1954, had succeeded in constructing 2,000 residential units in several districts, namely Al-Shamiya, Kaifan, Al-Fayhaa, Al-Salimya and Al-Da'yieh. In 1956, the state property authority started distributing houses and two years later, a special committee was set up to back up the government in running this vital sector.
The Saving and Credit Bank was founded in 1965 to build houses, offering reality loans to help citizens construct their homes. In 1974, the Public Authority for Housing Welfare was established to take over these tasks.
Kuwait's Ministry of Housing Affairs, established in 1975, was merged into the housing authority in 1986, and the State had distributed up to 91,600 residential units to the citizens till 2009.
At present, the housing authority's statistics show that the housing applications have been rising by eight percent per annum -- projected to reach up to 175,000 till 2020.
In 1995, Law Number 27 was enacted for including the private sector in construction in State-owned land plots.
In line with the policy of securing units for all citizens, the authorities have built new residential districts, namely Sabah Al-Ahmad, Al-Khairan and Al-Metalaa.
The housing authority had declared, in 2008, that it was involved in executing 23 major housing ventures, at a cost of more than KD 225 million. The 2013 statistical figures showed that the executed projects included 14,000 housing units. Number of the ones to be constructed reached 6,387, including built houses, land plots and flat apartment houses.
Figure of finished houses, this year, is forecast to reach 2,251.