With legislative elections looming, Morocco’s housing debate has found its first heavyweight skeptic. Amhamed El Hilali, a former director of legal affairs at the ministry overseeing territorial planning, urban development, housing and city policy, has pushed back hard against a campaign pledge from Mohamed Ouzine, secretary-general of the Popular Movement (MP) party, who has promised to turn rent-to-own housing into a national program should his party win the upcoming vote.
In a post on his personal Facebook page, El Hilali dismissed the proposal as « an old and outdated project, » noting that the legal framework behind it has existed for more than twenty-three years without producing any tangible results. Law 51.00 on lease-to-ownership housing, enacted by royal decree in November 2003, has remained largely theoretical, he said, because real estate developers have consistently refused to put it into practice.
That failure, according to El Hilali, is no accident. He points to what he calls a « real estate lobby » that strips any socially oriented housing policy of its substance, steering the market instead toward publicly subsidized programs — such as the well-known 250,000-dirham housing product — that deliver far higher margins for developers. He also faults the state for never establishing a dedicated institution to build rental or rent-to-own housing outside the network of speculators who, he argues, profit from ordinary Moroccans’ housing needs.
He recalled that despite ambitions voiced under former minister Ambarki, and later reform attempts led by Taoufiq Hjira and Nabil Benabdallah, a plan to bring nearly one million vacant apartments back onto the market — through rental, sale, or gradual rent-to-own arrangements — repeatedly ran into resistance from developers unwilling to see their profit margins shrink. He cited Diar Al Madina, a company with long experience managing real estate assets and delivering affordable and social housing, which was never elevated into the state’s operational arm for this kind of program.
Ouzine unveiled his pledge during a party communication event in Marrakech, presenting rent-to-own housing as a structural alternative to Morocco’s current housing policies. The idea, he explained, is to let citizens settle into a home through monthly payments scaled to their income, with part of each installment counted progressively toward full ownership — shifting public policy, in his words, from a « right to housing » to a « right to own a home. » The program would primarily target young people, civil servants, and low- and middle-income families squeezed by soaring rents in Morocco’s major cities.
