As part of the plan to renovate and rebuild old and degraded apartment buildings of Hanoi City, the 23 Hang Tre apartment building (Hoan Kiem ward, Hanoi) has shown many signs of degradation.
Apartment building 23 Hang Tre is located on a land plot with three fronts, adjacent to Hang Tre, Hang Thung streets and Tran Quang Khai street, with two sides facing Hanoi Old Quarter.
According to Lao Dong's records, many balconies in the apartment complex are surrounded by iron frames, forming dense rows of "tiger cages", making the construction appearance patchy.
The first floor of the building is currently mainly used as a business space for small shops. The large yard of the apartment complex is used as a parking space for residents. Inside the building, many walls along the stairs have peeled off and become patchy over time.
According to the proposed plan, the existing apartment complex will be replaced by a 21-story above-ground building, 3 basements, about 78m high, designed in neoclassical architecture.
Living in apartment building 23 Hang Tre for nearly 40 years, Mr. Nguyen Quoc Tien said that the project is currently degraded.
Every time it rains, the ceiling is often soaked in water and leaks down to the floor. Along with that, the apartment I am living in has many cracks, typically the crack extending between the floors. I hope the apartment complex will be renovated soon to make the area look more spacious and people have a better life" - Mr. Tien shared.
Mr. Nguyen Binh Minh - a resident of apartment building 23 Hang Tre - said that the structure of the building has changed a lot due to many households expanding and building "tiger cages".
Mr. Minh also hopes that the apartment building will be renovated soon and people will be resettled on the spot to stabilize their lives.
According to the Hanoi Department of Construction, the whole city currently has about 2,160 old apartment buildings that need to be reviewed and renovated. However, the progress of implementation in recent years is still slow compared to the set target. Many apartment buildings such as Thanh Cong, Giang Vo, Nghia Do, Vinh Ho... were built in the period 1979-1982, and are now seriously degraded.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Dr. Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem - Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association said that the city has built a project to renovate old apartment buildings since 2001. However, in reality, the renovation of old apartment buildings has not achieved the desired results to date, and is not in accordance with the set plan, becoming a major challenge for the city.
According to Mr. Nghiem, with new special mechanisms, especially clearer resettlement policies, Hanoi has a basis to expect to create substantive changes. However, the effectiveness still depends on the implementation, supervision and decentralization of management. Deeper decentralization, especially to the ward level, will create conditions to accelerate the progress of renovating old apartment buildings.
Hanoi will start renovating and rebuilding 8 old apartment buildings in the period 2026-2030. Including: Giang Vo collective housing area, Ngoc Khanh collective housing area and Thanh Cong collective housing area (Giang Vo ward); 3-story collective housing area (Ha Dong ward); Apartment building 23 Hang Tre, 162 Tran Quang Khai (Hoan Kiem ward); Apartment building 15C Tran Khanh Du (Cua Nam ward); Truong Dinh collective housing area (including buildings A, B, C, D, E, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5) and neighboring residential area (Tuong Mai ward); Thanh Xuan Bac collective housing area (Thanh Xuan ward).
