Resettlement houses and social housing (social housing) have different properties, making it difficult to make the conversion. In your opinion, what problems may arise during the transition process?
- There are 3 "bottleneck" problems in the process of converting resettlement houses to social housing above related to the legal process during conversion; psychology of the parties and another important factor is the valuation of public assets.
First: about the conversion legal process. The legal basis for implementing this process is specified in Point a, Clause 1, Article 124 of the Housing Law 2023. However, this is only a principle; There are currently no detailed regulations in guiding documents on the order, procedures, authority, documents, conditions... for conversion, so actual implementation locally will face some difficulties.
While resettlement housing and social housing are two different objects, "swapping" the nature of these two types of products must have specific guidelines - something we are lacking.
Let me just give an example: for social housing projects in general, the project investor will enjoy a maximum profit of 10% of the total construction investment cost and reserve 20% of the residential land area for service business. commercial, commercial housing. So when moving from a resettlement house (completed and currently a house), will the investor still enjoy the above incentives? Currently, there are no clear regulations on this issue.
Second: Local and people's psychology towards resettlement houses. In fact, there is a situation where localities want to maintain a resettlement apartment fund to have a housing fund available to arrange resettlement for households whose land is recovered. If there are no resettlement houses available and people choose the resettlement option, the locality will have to create a new housing fund or have to buy commercial housing at high prices.
Therefore, the locality still wants to maintain the resettlement housing fund - even though it is unknown when it will be used. Besides, for the people, their general psychology towards resettlement housing is another barrier. Some resettlement houses have a reputation for construction quality, reducing the value of the apartments. This can lead to a situation where people in general do not believe in the quality of resettlement houses, so being able to convert them is not necessarily easy to sell.
Third: Problems related to public asset valuation. According to regulations, resettlement houses invested by the State are public property. When converting resettlement housing (public property) to social housing to sell to people, it is necessary to determine the value of public property as a basis for determining the selling price.
Currently, the legal framework governing the valuation of public assets with converted resettlement housing funds is not really clear for valuation organizations to have sufficient legal basis for implementation. On the other hand, determining land prices or the value of public assets is always one of the "sensitive" areas because it is easily linked to loss of state assets, so valuation companies often do not want to do it.
Is converting abandoned resettlement houses to social housing the ultimate solution? In your opinion, how should we "radically" solve this problem?
- It is true that relocating abandoned houses to social housing only solves the "tip" of the problem, that is, only dealing with the currently abandoned resettlement apartments. To avoid the situation of abandoned resettlement houses, it is necessary to improve the quality of resettlement house construction in the future. Resettlement housing projects need to be built with good construction quality, and the technical and social infrastructure must be truly favorable to attract people to live.
On the other hand, to avoid the situation of abandoned resettlement houses in the future, localities need to review and balance land recovery plans with the implementation of resettlement projects.
When building resettlement projects, it is necessary to survey and conduct sociological surveys of households about their needs and aspirations for resettlement housing. This will be a factor for the locality to "balance" in speeding up the land recovery process while still ensuring that the resettlement housing fund is not wasted as currently.
In your opinion, how to attract businesses to participate in promoting investment in renovating the "quality" of degraded resettlement houses?
- For projects that still have maintenance periods, authorities need to review the construction quality of these projects and request construction contractors to perform maintenance on degraded items. For projects whose maintenance period has expired, authorities need to widely bid to select businesses to renovate long-abandoned resettlement housing projects.
Renovating and improving the quality of unused resettlement housing funds is a prerequisite in converting abandoned resettlement houses to social housing. Because if we do not renovate the resettlement house fund that has been abandoned for many years and has not been used for social housing, it is unlikely that we will be able to sell it to people when converting.
