ADOPTING AL-HIKR LONG TERM LEASE FINANCING FOR WAQF AND STATE LANDS IN MALAYSIA TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE PUBLIC HOUSING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31436/shajarah.v0i0.714Keywords:
Public housing, al-Hikr, Waqf, Islamic social financeAbstract
This concept paper provides a practical, policy solution to deliver
affordable public housing. By evaluating price-to-income ratios, it
analyzes to what extent housing has become seriously unaffordable
in Malaysia. We discuss how the federal government, state
governments, state Islamic religious councils (SIRCs) as well as
pension and investment institutions can participate, by examining
affordable public housing based on an Ottoman long-term lease
structure (al-Hikr) and subsequently adopted in the development of
waqf land in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore, the Housing
Development Board adopted the 99-year leasehold (al-Hikr) concept
and now houses over 80% of its citizens into low-cost state-built
housing. Accordingly, this study adopts case study, library research,
documentary analysis and descriptive statistics relating to housing
affordability and construction costs, to provide an Islamic social
finance solution by adopting al-Hikr for waqf and state lands in
Malaysia, to deliver affordable public housing to the bottom 40%
(B40) of households by median income.