The Juridical Framework of Public Housing: Reflections on Legitimacy and Responsibility

This article conceptualizes public housing as a trust-based allocation of usufruct, grounded in the principles of bayt al-māl, fiduciary responsibility (amānah), and public welfare (maṣlaḥah), without generating private ownership. It aims to fill a significant gap in the literature by systematically relating the fiscal order shaped in Islamic law around the administration of bayt al-māl, the principle of trust, and the notion of public benefit to the administrative logic of Turkey’s public housing regime (Law No. 2946). Its central argument is that public housing may be reinterpreted through an “amānah-usufruct model.” Within this model, the raqabah (corpus or bare title) remains vested in the public, while the manfaʿah (usufruct or right of use) is structured as a duty-linked, time-bound, and supervisable entitlement. The study adopts a doctrinal-comparative method, examining together classical fiqh texts, fiscal doctrines, contractual typologies, and modern legislation regulating allocation, non-transferability, evacuation, and compensation. The analysis is based on conceptual mapping, internal coherence, and functional comparison, and does not rely on empirical data. The findings demonstrate that both fiqh and modern administrative law regulate public housing as a supervised and duty-linked usufruct intended to prevent waste and secure public accountability. This convergence becomes particularly visible in such principles as the requirement of actual residence, non-transferability, the restriction of succession by inheritance, the application of proportionality and kifāyah criteria in allocation, liability based on taʿaddī and taqṣīr, and the obligation to vacate the dwelling upon termination of office. The principal divergence, however, lies in the normative foundations of legitimacy: whereas fiqh is grounded in a conception of responsibility shaped by trust and moral obligation, modern law is governed more decisively by procedural and administrative rationality.The article’s original contribution lies in proposing an analytical framework for assessing the legal legitimacy of public housing along the axes of allocation, supervision, and return. This approach demonstrates that public housing should be understood not as private property, but as a usufruct arrangement ordered toward the public good, and it clarifies more distinctly the legal distinction between public housing and social housing.