A report by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences showed that 20% of Kuwaitis live in apartments inside private housing, indicating that the main problem of the housing issue, which constitutes a difficult file inherited by successive governments and which failed to solve, “does not only lie in the long wait for requests for housing care and the inability to bear the cost of land in the private market, but is also due to mismatch between supply and demand, because the available housing that the residents can afford is not desired by the citizens.
The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences issued a report, summarizing the challenges facing Kuwaiti society and the government in the housing sector, with the aim of transforming the local dialogue on housing from a dialogue limited to granting the state lands for allocation for housing purposes, to a more comprehensive discussion about the impact of the current housing model on the economy, the construction environment and life of people.
In its report, titled “Housing for Kuwaitis, a Reading of the Existing Model and Its Consequences on Affordability of Housing and Quality of Life,” the Foundation drew attention to ignoring the process of developing land for residential purposes, and not paying attention to “improving the lives of citizens, at the level of residential neighborhoods that have suffered from The low public spaces and facilities, the scarcity of green spaces and jogging tracks, where Kuwait ranks low in many indicators of livability in cities, which shows the challenges facing the city in the competition to attract global investments, talents and tourists.
The report pointed out that the housing problem in Kuwait “is not only in the long wait for requests for housing care and the inability to afford the cost of land in the private market, but also in the mismatch between supply and demand, because the available housing that residents can afford is not desirable.” The report added, the housing offered in the market is either at prices that middle-income families cannot afford (private housing), or it is undesirable because of its location and type, which is intended for investment housing.
The Foundation pointed to challenges that impede urban management to work effectively and efficiently, including the scarcity of data and the difficulty of accessing it, the lack of clarity of housing and urban development policies, the lack of sufficient focus on sustainability, the lack of clear guidelines to improve the quality of architectural and urban design, the failure to monitor the proper implementation of the structural plan and the failure to empower departments Locality, weak stakeholder participation, and difficult access to land.
It noted the existence of many contradictions between the laws, regulations, plans and policies within the institutions among themselves, for example, between the structural plan and building regulations, which are observed both in the texts of these documents and in their application.