HCMC reviews land fund for construction of worker accommodation, social housing

She made the state at a today meeting on the housing development program for the period 2016-2025 with the participation of Chairwoman of the People's Council Nguyen Thi Le and Chairman of the People's Committee Phan Van Mai.

Speaking at the meeting, Director of the Department of Construction Tran Hoang Quan said that from 2016 to 2020, the floor area of the city increased by 53.7 million square meters. Self-built houses play the main role with an increase of 38.5 million square meters of floor space while commercial housing accounted for the second largest proportion, reaching 13.98 million square meters of floor and social housing increased by 1.23 million square meters of floor space.

Regarding social housing, in the 2016-2020 period, Ho Chi Minh City completed and put into use 19 projects, with 1.23 million square meters of floor space, reaching 69.2 percent of the set target. In the first quarter of 2022, a social housing project has been completed and put into use with a total land area of 0.43 ha, 32,668 square meters of construction floor comprising 260 apartments. According to the plan, HCMC will strive to develop 2.467 million square meters of social housing construction floors in the remaining time of the period 2021-2025.

According to  Director of the Department of Construction Tran Hoang Quan, the city's budget for the relocation program on and along the canals is very limited, not enough compared to the demand. Projects are not attractive to investors, so the city mainly spent the state budget with 62 percent, including 59 projects, with nearly VND27,000 billion, while the HCMC budget is also difficult and must be allocated for many other programs. Therefore, the city only allocates public investment capital for 32 projects.

The program of renovation, repair, and new construction to replace old apartments built before 1975 also encountered many hiccups along the way. Similarly, the work of renovating and embellishing existing residential areas is also facing many difficulties, partly because the planning of alleys is not realistic.

At the monitoring meeting, the delegates asked the question to clarify the amount of money the investor fulfills the obligation on social housing in the form of payment in cash equivalent to the value of the land fund of 20 percent. Head of the Urban Committee of the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City Tran Thi Thanh Van also said that through monitoring in localities, a lot of clean land such as in Hiep Thanh Ward in District 12, or land in Au Duong Lan Street in District 8 can be used for the construction of social housing.

Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Phan Van Mai affirmed that the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City will focus on housing development. Recently, the People's Committee has considered shortening the procedures for housing projects, from 500 days, it can be reduced to 133 or 217 days depending on the case.

According to Mr. Phan Van Mai, not only do workers have the need to buy and rent social housing, but many other subjects such as civil servants, athletes, and coaches also want a place to settle down in the southern metropolis.

When it comes to removing houses on and along canals, Mr. Phan Van Mai affirmed at least Ho Chi Minh City must remove half of the more than 20,000 dilapidated houses on and along canals.

Recognizing the efforts of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City in the past time in implementing the housing development program, Ms. Nguyen Thi Le also suggested that the People's Committee focus on accelerating the implementation of the social housing development plan between 2021 through 2025. According to her, in the period 2016-2020, the number of social housing projects completed and put into use is 19/64 projects. In the 2021-2025 period, Ho Chi Minh City plans to develop 47 projects, but only one project has been completed by the end of the first quarter of 2022.

According to Ms. Le, at the same time, it is necessary to review public land funds, land funds to build accommodation, and houses for workers to rent in export processing zones, industrial parks, or located near export processing zones and industrial parks. Along with that, it is soon to promulgate the Procedures and Procedures to shorten the execution time of investment projects to build social housing, and accommodation for workers, and have financial support policies to attract investors to implement the project.

Regarding the development of commercial housing, the Chairwoman of the People's Council proposed the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City take specific measures against investors who implement projects that do not ensure quality and deliberately prolong the project implementation time, delay investment in public works and delay the handover of technical and social infrastructure.

For individual houses, and rented accommodation, Ms. Nguyen Thi Le emphasized that Ho Chi Minh City should soon issue a support and management policy for this type of housing. According to the inspection results of the Department of Construction, there are about 60,470 rented houses for workers and employees in the southern largest city.

Worse, about 7 percent to 18 percent do not meet the criteria for the area (under 5 square meters a person and about 2 percent did not meet the criteria on facilities.

Furthermore, between 32 percent and 36 percent of rented houses do not have fire protection design records. The total estimated cost of repair and renovation to ensure standards is about VND 760 billion..

The work of compensation and relocation of houses on and along the canals is still quite slow, reaching 12.4 percent of the total 20,000 houses, said Ms. Le. Additionally, renovating, repairing, and building new ones to replace old apartments is also slow; subsequently, she suggested that the HCMC People's Committee pay attention to allocating capital and mobilizing capital to speed up the implementation of the renovation and development program including the implementation of projects on renovation, repair, and new construction to replace old apartments, relocation of houses on and along canals; renovating and embellishing existing residential areas in districts.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Le also analyzed that Ho Chi Minh City is a place to attract a lot of workers from other provinces, especially in localities bordering the city. Therefore, the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City needs to promote coordination with these localities, in order to share land resources, and develop housing with the goal of developing affordable housing in accordance with the affordability of low-income households, low income for sustainable development of real estate market.