The Selangor government has declared affordable housing as a top priority for its 2012 budget, less than a week after a federal announcement on the issue which affects a large proportion of the voting population.

NONEIn his concluding remarks at the Selangor 2011 Budget Dialogue in Subang today, Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim called affordable housing “the most important issue (for) the state”.

“We want every family in Selangor to have a chance of (having) a home, be it through rental or ownership,” he said.

Khalid’s statement comes hot on the heels of an announcement by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak that the BN federal government is allocating part of the land now occupied by the Sungai Besi airport for affordable housing.

While the type of property in the Sungai Besi mixed development project is still unclear, Selangor is considering building landed affordable housing to avoid complications now faced by low-cost flat dwellers.

Speaking to reporters later, Khalid said this will be decided following a workshop and consultations with experts.

The consultations will also help the state review the policy which makes it compulsory for developers to provide a fixed composition of low-cost, low-medium cost, medium and high-cost units in each project.

“We want to try to match it with the needs of the locality,” he said.
In his speech earlier, he had said that the state government has already allocated some parcels of land for affordable housing.

RM100 million to raise household income

Earlier, housing exco Iskandar Ab Samad proposed several models of affordable housing, based on his working visits to Toronto, Canada and Croydon, UK.

Among others he proposed council flats for the very poor who are unlikely to be able to buy property, as well as a "share" model, where buyers can buy half a property, while the government pays for the other half.

"When they have more money they will buy a greater share of the house until the own the whole house," he said, of a model successfully implemented in Croydon.

He also mooted models of affordable housing, which allow lower income to lower middle income residents to buy or rent at middle cost developments, with government subsidy to avoid creating ghettos and segregating society according to class.

Separately, the MB said that another area of focus for the Selangor budget will be programmes to raise household income as a following Selangor welfare to work concept.

He also announced RM100 million for such programmes, starting this year, funds of which come from MB Incorporated's debt buying activities.

"RM50 million will go microcredit for rural residents, RM20 million for microcredit for urban residents and RM30 million for the programme to raise household income through entreprenuership," he said.