A place to live in dignity for all: Making housing affordable
Since the 1960s, Bahrain’s leadership and government started a long, but steady journey of initiatives and efforts to provide adequate and affordable social housing to facilitate a better life for middle/limited and low-income Bahraini families. This journey started with the issuance of Decree No. (2) Finance of 1962 regarding the Establishment of the Housing and Ownership Project and its operational components, Housing Department, its competent committees, executive regulations, and its explanatory note. In that same year, the Housing and Ownership Committee was established, drafting the first legislation with policies related to offering housing services to citizens and 1963 witnessed the laying of the Foundation Stone of the first new town in Bahrain, i.e. Isa Town.
Therefore, there was a need for an official entity to assume the role of providing housing services to citizens, hence the Ministry of Housing was established in 1975, and this historical and important step was followed by a series of Decrees, laws, and ministerial orders to enhance the process and to find the best policies and venues to deliver affordable housing solutions in several housing affordable forms, beginning with building subsidised dwellings and providing different types of loans to assist eligible Bahraini families to purchase or build their homes on lands they owned or receive a gifted plot from the government represented by the Ministry of Housing to build on, which prompted an approach of a logical sequence in the process of developing and delivering housing services, and it was equally important to develop a housing strategy, controls, and provisions to govern and ensure the delivery process of adequate and affordable housing services to the eligible categories of the community in all its aspects, hence Decree law No. (10)