Continuing the fifth session, on the morning of June 19, the National Assembly held a plenary discussion in the hall on the draft Law on Housing (amended).

The State needs to set specific goals and roadmaps to have a large enough number of social housing to meet people's needs.

Speaking at the meeting, delegate Nguyen Van Hien (Lam Dong delegation) said that according to the impact assessment report, the policy on development and management of social housing for sale, rent... is one of eight important policy groups with this law amendment.

Delegate Nguyen Van Hien: Social housing must be adjusted in the direction of increasing rental housing, and state budget support sources must be appropriately divided among all three parties: Investors, operating management agencies, and residents. Photo: Tuan Huy

Through research, delegate Nguyen Van Hien said that this policy as expressed in the draft has not really been accurate and has not properly addressed practical problems. The delegate raised two main problems.

Firstly, the policy and draft are moving in the direction of trying to ensure that low-income people and policy beneficiaries enjoy and own social housing instead of ensuring that people have the right to legal housing. The policy and provisions in the draft Housing Law seem to be aiming at the goal of giving people the right to own social housing.

"However, in reality, low-income people, especially in urban areas, are mainly workers and new employees with incomes lower than average. While housing is a huge asset, beyond the means of most low-income people, buying and owning an apartment, even social housing, on installments is a huge financial burden," said delegate Nguyen Van Hien.

Therefore, according to the delegate, if this target is attached, it will lead to the consequence that people will falsify conditions on income and area to benefit from buying social housing at low prices. Another case is that people with money borrow the names of workers to register to buy, leading to speculation, making social housing not serve the right subjects, losing its meaning.

The second problem, according to delegate Nguyen Van Hien, is the lack of separation between social housing development policies and social housing management and operation policies. In particular, too much attention is paid to incentives for the supply side - investors - rather than the demand side - low-income people.

From there, the Lam Dong delegation suggested that social housing policies should aim for clearer and more feasible goals, specifically focusing on the core goal of social housing development, which is to meet the need for suitable housing for people, not to meet the need for home ownership.

Scene of the morning meeting on June 19. Photo: Tuan Huy

With that orientation, delegate Nguyen Van Hien said that social housing must be adjusted in the direction of increasing rental housing, and state budget support sources must be appropriately divided for all three parties: Investors, operating management agencies and people.

Along with that, the State's policy needs to set very specific goals and roadmaps to have a large enough number of social housing to meet the needs of the people. At the same time, the concept of social housing in the draft law should be revised. Accordingly, social housing only applies to the form of renting, not the regulation of buying or leasing.

If social housing is only for rent as experienced in other countries, there will be no situation where high-income people compete to buy or rent social housing with low-income people, creating no social inequality.

"It would be reasonable to have separate regulations on low-cost housing and social housing, because low-cost housing can be bought or rented, and is essentially commercial housing, and social relations should only be rented out," said a delegate from Lam Dong, adding that only then will people, especially low-income people in urban areas, have hope of accessing social housing.

In addition, regarding the quality of social housing, delegate Nguyen Lam Thanh (Thai Nguyen delegation) proposed to expand the concept of social housing, avoiding the view that social housing is housing for type 2 subjects, cheap price with poor quality, not ensuring conditions of use for people as has existed in some projects in the past, especially the issue of resettlement housing causing public outrage...

PHUONG ANH