The Ministry of Construction has just submitted a document on the issuance of a Government Resolution on a number of special mechanisms to handle difficulties and problems due to legal regulations and breakthrough regulatory targets for social housing development. The Ministry is seeking opinions on this draft until November 7, 2025.
One of the notable points of the draft is the priority of purchasing social housing. The Ministry of Construction said that Clause 1, Article 96 of the Land Law stipulates: "Households and individuals who are using agricultural land when the State reclaims the land, if they meet the conditions for compensation prescribed in Article 95 of this Law, will be compensated in agricultural land or in money or in land with a different purpose than the type of reclaimed land or in housing".
Clause 1, Article 98 of the Land Law stipulates: Households, individuals, people of Vietnamese origin residing abroad, economic organizations that are using residential land, owning houses attached to land use rights in Vietnam when the State reclaims land, if they meet the conditions for compensation prescribed in Article 95 of this Law, shall be compensated in the form of residential land or in housing or in money or in land with a different purpose than the type of reclaimed land.
Clause 1, Article 99 of the Land Law stipulates: Households and individuals who are using non-agricultural land other than residential land when the State reclaims the land, if they meet the conditions for compensation prescribed in Article 95 of this Law, shall be compensated in land with the same purpose of use as the type of reclaimed land or in money according to the remaining land use term for land used for a term or in land with a purpose of use other than the type of reclaimed land or in housing.
Thus, the law on land has provisions on compensation for housing when the state reclaims agricultural land, non-agricultural land and residential land.
However, in reality, this mechanism has not been widely applied because the locality does not have a housing fund available for allocation, and there are no specific instructions on the process, criteria, and valuation of compensation houses; while people prefer to receive money rather than receive a house, investors are hesitant to arrange housing funds because it affects the structure of the product.
These shortcomings have caused the progress of land acquisition and site clearance in many localities to be prolonged, especially for social housing projects and new urban areas.
People are slow to be arranged stable housing, causing complaints; businesses do not have clean land to implement projects, slowing down the development goal of at least 1 million social housing units...
The Ministry of Construction also said that according to the law on housing, it is stipulated as follows:
Clause 10, Article 76 of the Housing Law stipulates that "Households and individuals who are subject to land acquisition and must clear or demolish houses according to the provisions of law and have not been compensated by the State with housing or residential land" are eligible to buy or rent social housing if they do not have a house under their ownership or have a house under their ownership in a province or centrally run city where there is a social housing project but the average housing area per capita is lower than the minimum housing area; do not require this subject to meet income requirements.
Thus, the law on housing has stipulated that households and individuals whose land has not been compensated by the state with housing or residential land, if they meet the conditions of not having a house, or the average housing area per capita below the minimum level, can buy or rent social housing.
To create a mechanism to encourage people to quickly hand over land to the state when reclaiming it for social housing, helping to have a clean land fund soon, there should be a preferential mechanism, allowing people and households whose land is reclaimed to be given priority to buy social housing in that project without having to meet housing conditions, income conditions or not having to draw lots.
From the above analysis, in the draft, the Ministry of Construction proposes: Subjects that are arranged for resettlement in the form of buying or renting social housing or households and individuals who are subject to compensation, support, and resettlement when the State reclaims land or agrees to transfer land use rights to project investors for social housing development shall be given priority to buy or rent-purchase social housing without having to meet housing conditions and income conditions, except in cases where they have been bought or rent-purchased social housing according to regulations.
