Okaz Has the Ministry of Housing become only concerned with the development of the real estate activities so that its minister predicts the imminent end of the stagnation of the real estate market and the return of its boom by mid-2016? We were waiting for the minister to break the good news to us that the housing problem is nearing an end and that the inflated balloon of the high prices will be deflated. Instead, in a statement the minister told us that the boom would return to the real estate market as if it only needs a false boom based on exaggerated prices. The purchase or renting a house in Europe or America has become less costly than obtaining a house in our arid desert. The minister's statement does not only contradict the government's policy declared for years that the exaggerated prices of the houses and land plots would come down but is insinuating that this policy does not exist any more. The minister's statement is also implying that the ministry's objectives of supporting the real estate developers to become partners in solving the housing problem will be at our own expense! I have always called for making the private sector a partner in solving the housing crisis and have asked the government to guarantee the housing loans. I fully supported the government in changing its position from a service provider to a service organizer. However, what I see now is that the ministry is building its palace on a high hill. The enabling of the citizen to obtain a housing loan to purchase a real estate unit or a land at high prices is not a solution to the accommodation problem. It is rather shifting the problem from the position of accommodation to the position of indebtedness. The citizen will surely lose on both fronts when he or she is unable to pay his/her bank loan. The citizen, in this case, will lose both the house and the freedom.
