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Tripoli, 1 July:
The chairman of the Libyan Housing Committee, Hatem Ben Fayed, has said that the Libya needs an extra 900,000 . . .[restrict]housing units.
He also said that housing prices had risen at an annual rate of 10 percent since the revolution, mainly as a result of the return of capital by Libyans living abroad.
Speaking in an interview with arabia.net, Ben Fayed pointed out that the gap between supply and demand was especially large because of the malpractices of the former regime and the existence of unfair and rigid legislation. The latter was in urgent need of modification he said. He added that the last study of the country’s housing needs was done in 2006 when it was estimated that 600,000 housing units were needed.
Fayed pointed out that the Qaddafi’s regime had ordered the building of some 300,000 but they were distributed among regime supporters. None was given to families in desperate need of housing for whom they suppose to have been built in the first place.
“We have three categories of existing needy Libyan families,” Ben Fayed said.
“The first category are those who were included in the 2006 study conducted by the former government. The second category were families displaced in the revolution and which estimates suggested that there were around 250,000. However, their number has fallen dramatically since the revolution as many returned to their homes thus reducing the figure to some 90,000 only.
“As for the third category, they are displaced families who do not have a house and no means to rent either. They are reliant on another family members or relatives to provide them shelter, such as a brother or a father. These families may number as many as 115,000, most of whom are young, newly married couples.”
He emphasized that the absence of proper legislation was the major cause of the problems of the real estate sector in Libya. Investors were worried about making investments in the present legal climate
Ben Fayed said that Qaddafi’s Law No. 4 was the prime reason for real estate sector problems because it stated that a home was the property of those who occupied it. As a result the majority of property owners were reluctant to rent out property because of the fear that it could then be claimed as the property of the tenant.
Fayed called for the swift activation of the role of civil institutions and the private sector, a sector that he said was still largely non-existent. He added that government performance did not meet the current high level of people’s expectations.
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