Housing

 In his speech of August 20, 2001, the King sounded the alarm, warning against the danger of the proliferation of unhealthy habits and called for the adoption of a national program to fight against this phenomenon. The same interest was reflected in the speech given by the Sovereign on the occasion of the return to parliament on October 11, 2001: "we can only preserve the dignity of the citizen by providing him with decent housing and by accelerating the implementation of the national program for the fight against insalubrious housing and the eradication of slums. These constitute a threat to the cohesion and balance of the social fabric and a source of frustration, exclusion, deviation and extremism." said the King.

But it is the 2003 Speech from the Throne that would be the opening to an aggressive policy of fight against slums. "Two years later, instead of a gradual eradication of slums, we, on our visits to different regions of the Kingdom, noted with bitterness, their proliferation in many cities. What’s even worse is that, shantytowns were born, propagated and amplified to become real wild cities," says the Sovereign, who is responsible for this state of affairs for both the citizen and local authorities.

Nearly 5 million Moroccans live in low quality housing. The latter not only distorts and disfigures the Moroccan urban landscape, but the bed of the reproduction of many social ills as well.

Therefore, a large project was launched to eradicate slums; since their situation has become very alarming, as well as provide the poorest housing in proportion to their resources and address the challenges posed by old abandoned houses.

From 2003, the pace of the fight against illegal slums intensifies, by launching 96 projects for the realization of 265,000 units, sanctioning overruns committed in terms of housing and town planning, upgrading the profession of architects, setting up a guarantee fund to facilitate the populations low and irregular incomes, access to property, etc…

In order to ensure a large number of decent Moroccan habitats, the pace of housing construction took its cruising speed. Thus, it was planned to build over 2003 and 2004 approximately 450,000 housing units with a value of 9500 not exceeding 120 000 DH.

In 2004, 103,000 units were built with 27,000 units restructured.

In 2005, it was expected to reach the figure of 100,000 units planned by year.

During this same year, new sites were opened in Sidi Yahya Zair (near Rabat) and Tamansourte (region of Marrakech).

 Cities without Slums:

 To achieve its program "Cities without Slums" (VSB), the government has butchers double allocating project: a budget of 75 billion dirham, of which 25 billion is paid by the State, and mobilizing a tax base of 18,000 hectares.

 To allow this program to succeed, the institutions in charge of housing and that are under the supervision of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development have been restructured to better regulate the field of housing and the planning. Thus, five new urban agencies were created and others are in the planning stage.

 The results of "cities in slums" were outstanding, because at the end of 2005, the city of Meknes was the first Moroccan city to be cleared of slums and thus have met the challenge of becoming a model city nationwide.

 Law 04/04 criminalizes fraud:

 Law 04/04 has strengthened its control in the fight against substandard housing. The provisions of this Act relate essentially by defining the terms of issue of the building permit and the conditions for the opening of a site. But the innovation introduced by this law consists of implementing tougher penalties for fraud. Indeed, the law 04-04 does not hesitate to criminalize offenses of slums. Thus, Article 71 provides example sentences of imprisonment ranging from three months to one year's imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 to 300,000 dirham or one of these two penalties against any person who engages construction without obtaining the building permit.

The penalty is even heavier for the president of the municipal council or his deputy would have issued a building permit regardless of the procedure. This penalty varies between 6 months and 4 years of prison and a fine of 100 000 to 500 000 DH or one of these penalties.

In addition, pursuant to the Act, local authorities having broad powers to destroy their home do not meet current standards.

For more information see the following link:

Ministry of National Planning, Urban Planning, Housing and Urban Policy