Solving the housing problem for people, avoiding resource waste
As Lao Động reported, numerous boarding houses and mini apartments in Hanoi that do not meet fire safety requirements have been requested to temporarily cease operations. This has caused many people to struggle and rush to find new accommodations.
Many opinions suggest that before requesting boarding houses to cease operations, authorities must provide a solution for where workers and students will go when their accommodations are suddenly shut down. Particularly, there should be a push to convert long-abandoned resettlement houses into housing for students and workers to avoid waste.
According to Lao Động's observations, currently, there are tens of thousands of abandoned resettlement apartments in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, causing significant waste of land resources and public assets. To address this situation, during a meeting to resolve difficulties, promote social housing development, and implement the project to build at least 1 million social housing units for low-income individuals and industrial park workers from 2021-2030, the Prime Minister requested the Ministry of Construction to study the conversion of unused resettlement housing into social housing.
According to Dr. Trần Xuân Lượng - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Real Estate Market Research and Evaluation Institute, resettlement housing left abandoned could be a relatively large housing resource that is being "forgotten" amidst the current shortage of housing for students, workers, and laborers.
"Currently, the demand for housing in major cities is very high, so it needs to be dispersed. Management agencies can direct people to rent social housing or abandoned resettlement houses... But to achieve this, plans must be accelerated to awaken these resettlement houses.
Especially, after converting these resettlement houses, social security and transportation infrastructure must be ensured so that people can easily access central areas. The situation of "abandoning the market" must not occur, and the scene of abandonment must not repeat because it does not meet the needs.
Solving the root cause of abandoned resettlement houses
Speaking with Lao Động, Lawyer - MSc Phạm Thanh Tuấn (Hanoi Bar Association) said that the solution of converting resettlement houses into social housing only addresses the "surface" of the problem, meaning we are only dealing with the abandoned resettlement apartments.
To eliminate the situation of abandoned resettlement houses, the key factor is to improve the quality of resettlement housing construction in the future. Resettlement housing projects need to be built with good construction quality, and technical and social infrastructure must be truly convenient to attract residents.
On the other hand, to avoid the situation of abandoned resettlement houses in the future, localities need to review and balance the land recovery plans with the implementation of resettlement projects.
"When building resettlement projects, it is necessary to survey and conduct sociological investigations with households about their needs and desires for resettlement housing. This will be a factor for localities to "balance" in both accelerating land recovery progress and ensuring that the resettlement housing fund is not wasted as it is now," MSc Phạm Thanh Tuấn suggested.
Mr. Nguyễn Hoàng Nam - General Director of G-Home - said that in some projects in Hanoi, 70-80% of those who bought resettlement houses transferred them to others within the first 3 years of purchase, and many remaining households also rented them out instead of living there.
"Perhaps it is time for authorities to conduct a serious survey on the percentage of people living in resettlement areas to determine the appropriate number of apartments for this type of housing. This will avoid the current waste of housing. In the near future, the urbanization rate will increase rapidly, and without a scientific basis for building resettlement houses, the number of unused apartments will not stop at tens of thousands," Mr. Nguyễn Hoàng Nam suggested.
Additionally, converting abandoned resettlement apartments into social housing is very difficult and not a short-term solution but a long-term story. To achieve this, many provisions of various related laws such as the Land Law, Housing Law... will need to be amended, or a separate resolution from the National Assembly for the conversion will be required.
