Inadequate regulations on reserving commercial project land for social housing construction

Accordingly, the report of the Department of Planning and Architecture of Ho Chi Minh City (QHKT) stated that the requirement for all investment projects to build commercial housing in urban areas from type III and above to reserve land for building social housing (NOXH) at a rate of 20% as prescribed by the Government is not suitable to reality.

Requiring all projects to reserve social housing land without basing on local housing development programs and plans such as land use planning, urban planning, economic and geographical conditions of each locality... may lead to a situation where this land fund is not invested, causing loss of urban aesthetics, wasting land resources and increasing housing prices.

Meanwhile, commercial housing construction investment projects have small land use scale, and allocating land to invest in social housing construction is not feasible because there is not enough minimum area to invest in an independent social housing block, ensuring standards, construction regulations, architecture, and general landscape.

Such land scale is also not feasible if converted into low-rise social housing type, because special type and type I urban areas do not encourage this type to save land fund. At the same time, if this type is developed in commercial projects, urban areas with high value can potentially contain negative and unfair.

Requiring land use planning of commercial projects to build social housing image 1 — Regulations on land allocation for social housing are considered unreasonable in the current situation.

From the above shortcomings, the Department of Planning and Investment recommends that the Ministry of Construction promptly review, amend and supplement documents guiding the implementation of laws related to planning in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Planning.

For existing laws, decrees, circulars guiding implementation, standards, and new planning regulations, the Department of Planning and Investment proposes that the Ministry of Construction issue specific regulations for the City as a special urban area with different management requirements than many provinces and cities with low urbanization density.

At the same time, it is proposed that the Ministry of Construction research and develop a national information system and database on planning to provide synchronous, unified, complete, accurate and timely information for the work of planning establishment, appraisal, approval, adjustment and implementation.

In addition, this report also stated that, through reviewing the implementation process in the 2016-2021 period, the Department of Planning and Investment found that most of the zoning plans in the city that have been approved so far have not determined the location, scale of land area for social housing or have not been updated with social housing projects.

The cause of this problem is believed to come from the fact that the detailed construction planning projects at a scale of 1/2000 were approved before the Housing Law 2014 and Decree 100 came into effect. New social housing projects were approved after the approval of the adjustment of the 1/2000 scale zoning planning projects in 2013, so they have not been updated in the zoning planning projects.

In particular, the review work to propose additional land area for social housing in the zoning plan is currently facing many difficulties and obstacles when forecasting local social housing demand and determining appropriate land allocation.

Source