Morocco is accelerating its strategy to eliminate slum housing, restructuring priority metropolitan areas with tens of billions of dirhams in funding as it works to close the file on shantytowns and buildings at risk of collapse by 2028, according to an analysis puvlished by L’Economiste daily.
Housing Ministry figures show the number of households living in shantytowns rose from 270,000 at the first 2004 census to 496,253 by the end of September 2025, an 83 percent increase, though the state has already taken charge of 370,384 families, mobilizing more than 61 billion dirhams; rehousing accounts for 71 percent of interventions, direct relocation 17 percent and urban restructuring projects the remaining 11 percent.
Public efforts have accelerated markedly in recent years. Where 2018-2021 averaged around 6,200 households treated annually, the pace rose to 18,000 families a year from 2022 onward, while the rate of new shantytown growth collapsed from an average of 104,000 additional families a year between 2012 and 2021 to roughly 6,800 households a year in the recent period, a 35 percent drop in expansion flow between 2021 and 2025. L’Economiste reports that 62 cities have now achieved near-total resolution, with the national completion rate for the “Cities Without Slums” objective standing at 72 percent, a perimeter set to soon include the Laâyoune-Saquia El Hamra region.
To resorb the roughly 120,000 remaining shantytown households, the 2024-2028 program introduces a revised approach built on reconfigured public-private partnerships and social-housing-type apartments capped at 300,000 dirhams, drawn partly from developer stock mobilized through calls for expressions of interest, alongside direct housing assistance. Priority goes to high-pressure urban centres: in Casablanca-Settat, resorption continues toward 2027 to cover 62,000 families with more than 15.64 billion dirhams in funding, 9.44 billion of it state-financed; in Marrakech-Safi, two agreements provide for rehousing 30,500 households in Marrakech by 2028 for 7.92 billion dirhams, plus intervention on 500 substandard homes in Safi worth 126 million dirhams; and Rabat-Salé-Kénitra receives 3.6 billion dirhams to rehouse 12,000 households.
Alongside shantytown resorption, buildings threatening collapse are being addressed under Law 94-12, through the National Urban Renovation Agency and dedicated financial instruments. Since 2012, 84 agreements worth 8.32 billion dirhams have treated 26,811 substandard buildings out of 43,000 identified, or 62 percent completion, with the remaining 16,189 structures under intervention. Targeted initiatives also cover the capital and the medinas of Tangier, Asilah, Tétouan and Ouazzane, backed by a digital platform tracking renovation projects, while the general direct housing assistance program counts more than 111,000 beneficiaries for an outstanding 9.1 billion dirhams, a homeownership lever set to continue through the end of 2028.
