New policies are needed to mobilize resources for social housing development.
According to a report by the Ministry of Construction, by the end of 2022, the country had completed 307 social housing projects in urban areas with about 157,100 units, reaching only 41.7% of the plan in the National Housing Development Strategy. Currently, the country is implementing 418 more projects with about 432,400 units.
The number of completed social housing apartments has been decreasing steadily over the years. (Photo: TD)
In Ho Chi Minh City alone, 23 social housing projects with 18,085 apartments were put into use in the 2015-2020 period, reaching 75% of the plan, and it is expected to invest in the construction of 25 social housing projects in the 2021-2025 period with a total of 30,610 apartments.
However, the number of completed social housing apartments has been decreasing steadily over the years. For example, in 2020, only 8 projects with 1,677 apartments were completed, in 2021 only 5 projects with 1,694 apartments were completed, and in 2022 only 6 projects with 1,300 apartments were completed.
Commenting on these figures, Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), said that the results of social housing development have not met the set plan, and have not met the huge housing needs of officials, civil servants, state employees, armed forces officers, workers, laborers, low-income urban people and immigrants.
According to Mr. Chau, the Prime Minister recently approved the Project to build at least 1 million social housing units for low-income earners and industrial park workers in the 2021-2030 period. However, this goal is facing many challenges.
“If calculated from 2021 to mid-May 2023, the whole country has only achieved 4.55% of the plan for the 2021-2025 period, which is a low number. The target of 428,000 social housing apartments by the end of 2025 will be a big challenge,” Mr. Chau commented.
On that basis, Mr. Chau said that it is necessary to focus efforts on building and perfecting the social housing policy of the Draft Housing Law (amended) to remove obstacles and difficulties in mechanisms and policies, create land funds, and create preferential capital sources for social housing credit to support buyers and renters of social housing.
“At the same time, new policies are needed to mobilize more socialized resources from the private sector to participate in investing in social housing development, creating conditions for large real estate corporations and enterprises to fulfill their commitment to invest in developing about 1.5 million social housing units by 2030,” said Mr. Chau.
Need to eliminate the stereotype that social housing is cheap housing
One of the major challenges of social housing today is people's prejudice. Many people think that social housing is cheap housing, cheap housing of low quality, leading to many people having wrong information and not being interested in this product line.
One of the major challenges of social housing today is people's prejudice. (Photo: MD)
In fact, in recent times, there have been a number of social housing projects with poor construction quality, leaking, quickly deteriorating or lacking on-site utilities and services and lacking urban services in the surrounding area, and not having convenient traffic connections, so there have been social housing projects advertised for sale dozens of times but still no buyers.
There are also cases where some social housing projects have been complained about by customers, leading to incorrect perceptions about the quality of social housing or considering social housing as cheap housing.
Mr. Chau said that perhaps due to incorrect perception of social housing and only aiming to find ways to reduce the cost of social housing or considering social housing as cheap housing, there have been some legal regulations on social housing that have not been in the direction of ensuring the quality of social housing is equivalent to that of commercial housing of the same type.
For example, the mandatory regulation of using unburnt bricks for social housing projects is unreasonable, or some other regulations related to investment capital ratio,...
“Therefore, in the revised Housing Law, it is necessary to affirm that social housing is housing with the same quality as commercial housing of the same type,” said the Chairman of HoREA.
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