Under the patronage of Prince Faisal bin Bandar, Governor of the Riyadh Region, the International Housing and Cooperative Housing Forum is set to begin in Riyadh. It is the first international forum to examine the current state and future of housing and cooperative housing in Saudi Arabia in line with Vision 2030, and will run for three days, from October 15–17, at Al-Farida Hall in Riyadh.
On this occasion, Dr. Abdullah Al-Shadadi, President of the Cooperative Housing Society and Chair of the Organizing Committee, explained that the forum is being held in strategic partnership with the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, and the Ministry of Housing, with the aim of contributing to solving the housing crisis and providing and maintaining housing units for middle- and low-income citizens.
The forum aims to support the policies of the Ministry of Housing, which recently launched the «Housing» program—involving 16 different government agencies—to remove obstacles in the sector, enable Saudi families to own their first home, and to raise the homeownership rate to 60 percent by 2020 and to 70 percent by 2030.
Al-Shadadi explained that the forum includes lectures and workshops focusing on the current state and future of housing and cooperative housing in light of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing housing and cooperative housing, as well as an examination of the key factors for success in housing and cooperative housing, and local, regional, and international experiences in cooperative housing. The forum will showcase pioneering Saudi cooperative models and experiences, address the issue of financing housing and cooperative housing, and explore modern construction techniques and development.
In a documentary study he prepared titled “The Reality of Housing Cooperatives in the Kingdom and Ways to Develop Them,” Al-Shadadi affirmed that housing cooperatives have been and continue to be the path to the right solution for the housing crisis.
