An assessment on stakeholders' perspective on the housing development monitoring and enforcement mechanism under Housing Development Act (Control and Licensing) 1966 and Regulations [Act 118]

Abstract

The research aims to assess stakeholders' perspectives on current issues of housing development monitoring and enforcement mechanisms under Act 118. The housing industry in Malaysia is regulated under the jurisdiction of Housing Development (Control and Licensing) Act 1966 and Regulations (Act 118), with the governance of MHLG. This study is based on a quantitative and qualitative approach that utilises data from focus groups, statistical data and questionnaire survey as the data collection tool. Analysis on data statistics of housing development is conducted to provide insights on the current scenario of housing development in Malaysia, mainly based on issues pertaining to mechanism to monitor housing development progress, procedure to declare abandonment of housing development project, as well as procedure to blacklist and compound problematic housing developer. A questionnaire survey is distributed to 55 key stakeholders of housing industry to gather their preliminary perspectives. Inferential analysis through chi-square test is conducted to examine the relationship between stakeholders’ socio-economic background with their perspectives toward the current practice in housing development monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. FGD session is organised to explore key stakeholders' opinions on the revolving issues in this aspect. Subsequently, thematic analysis is employed on the audio transcription throughout the FGD session input. In essence, the study has found that the number of delayed, ailing, and abandoned project is borderline constant, and the rehabilitation process of abandoned projects is deliberately performed. Consequently, 90.9% of stakeholders claimed the current declaration process of declaring abandonment is time consuming, and the mechanism unreliable to measure work progress is unclear. Findings also gathered that 36.05% of blacklisted developers caused ailing projects, with 11,995 housing units affected by unlicensed development. Thus, 89.1% of stakeholders believed the current provisions for monitoring activities of problematic housing development are insufficient because of the loose requirements for APDL application and the lack of protection on house buyer’s rights. Results suggested that improvements are needed to strengthen the mechanism to monitor housing development progress, accelerate the process of reviving the abandoned project, and enhancing the conditions and requirements for application of APDL. Conclusively, it is imperative for key stakeholders of the housing industry to perform their duties in the execution of a safe and quality housing development, particularly in aspect of housing development monitoring and enforcement towards a progressive housing industry in Malaysia.