Affordable housing projects in KL to be made mandatory, says Anwar

Construction of affordable houses or People's Housing Projects (PPR) will be made compulsory in the development of housing projects in Kuala Lumpur, said Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

He said the government's aim of providing more affordable houses for the people had not been achieved, hence the need to set such a condition on housing developers so that there would be more affordable houses to meet the needs of the poor.

The prime minister said housing is considered a serious problem in the federal capital, with 3,000 applications for affordable housing or PPR received in a year, while the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) was only able to offer 300 units per year.

"We are making the changes now. (In a meeting that I chaired two months ago) to not approve any housing project (in Kuala Lumpur) if the projects by the developers do not have affordable housing units or PPR in the same project," he added.

"Regarding the strict condition imposed by DBKL for PPR application, I have asked DBKL to make some adjustments," he said during the Minister's Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat today.

He was responding to a question from Fong Kui Lun (PH-Bukit Bintang) on whether the government was aware of the strict conditions for renting a DBKL PPR unit.

Meanwhile, in response to a supplementary question from Mohd Suhaimi Abdullah (PN-Langkawi) on whether there were overlapping roles among the various housing agencies, Anwar said the government had established a Cabinet committee to standardise the agencies concerned and placed them under the two deputy prime ministers.

"Our tendency before is when there is a problem, an agency will be set up, and when another problem crops up, another agency will be set up... but the job is the same. Now, we bring all these agencies together and coordinate them so that the housing programmes for the people do not overlap," he said.