Social housing gap
Mr. Nguyen Van Lam, 35 years old, is a worker in Tam Thang Industrial Park, Quang Nam. For more than 10 years, he, his wife and two young children have lived in a rented room of less than 15 square meters in Tam Thang commune, Tam Ky city. Every month, in addition to the rent of nearly 1.5 million VND, his family also has to bear the additional rent for electricity, water and other living expenses, making life always in a state of difficulties. "We hope to have a social housing unit to settle down, but so far there has been no chance. The project has been mentioned a lot, but the implementation is too slow. Procedures for borrowing preferential interest rates to buy social housing from the State (through a credit package of VND 120,000 billion) are difficult to access because of many cumbersome procedures and conditions" - Mr. Lam shared.
Currently, Quang Nam has more than 140,000 workers, most of whom are from other provinces or from districts to work, having to rent accommodation in degraded and cramped housing areas.
Although the province aims to build 14,700 social housing units by 2025, up to now, only 200 units of the Panko Tam Thang Company Workers' Housing Area (Tam Ky) have been completed and put into use. The remaining 3 low-income housing projects are facing prolonged difficulties.
Similarly, Politburo member and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh assigned the target to Quang Ngai province to attract and build 6,300 social housing units by 2030. Of which, 1,500 houses are for the 2022-2025 period and 4,800 houses are for the 2026-2030 period. However, the province still does not have social housing for low-income people, although the number of workers, civil servants, and laborers working in agencies, units, and enterprises with grassroots unions under the management of the Provincial Federation of Labor is up to 115,000 people.
Mr. Tran Phuoc Hien - Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Ngai province - emphasized that building social housing in Quang Ngai is very necessary because the demand is huge to create the best conditions for low-income workers to continue working in the province.
Businesses and the government are facing difficulties
According to Mr. Le Van Dung - Chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Nam province, a series of low-income housing projects in Quang Nam have been on a very sluggish and unfinished schedule for many years, including: STO Rural Agricultural Consulting and Sports Tourism Services Joint Stock Company (Dien Ban), with 6 blocks of apartments of 1,176 apartments; project of European Real Estate Company Limited (Dien Ban), including apartments and townhouses with 469 apartments; project of workers' housing in Tam Hiep commune (Nui Thanh) of Danatol Joint Stock Company with 600 apartments...
Quang Nam leaders analyzed that the first difficulty is due to overlapping and entangled land processes and procedures, some of the regulations are not suitable for reality, causing difficulties for the locality. Second, there are some places with suitable land to implement social housing construction but resources for investment are still difficult (enterprises are not interested in investing in social housing projects because of large investment capital, slow capital recovery time, low profits, cumbersome procedures). The third problem is that the current income conditions of workers are still not enough to own social housing, even though the social housing price is lower than in other places.
Applying many incentives for social housing projects
Faced with this situation, the Quang Nam provincial government is making efforts to find solutions to remove difficulties, from supporting site clearance, tax incentives for investors to simplifying procedures for workers to register to buy a house.
In December 2024, Quang Nam passed a Resolution regulating the mechanism to support the implementation of social housing investment projects in Quang Nam province until 2030. Accordingly, Quang Nam will allocate about 416 billion VND to support 100% of the cost of compensation, support, and resettlement according to the provisions of the land law; create a clean land fund for investors to build social housing; support 50% of the cost of investment in the construction of technical infrastructure systems within the project (except for technical infrastructure systems inside the building), but not exceeding 10 billion VND/project. The province also exempts fees and charges for investment procedures such as appraisal fees for tasks, detailed construction planning projects; appraisal of feasibility study reports, fire prevention and fighting, etc.
Quang Nam also implements many solutions to ensure that social housing has a selling and rental price suitable for the affordability of low-income households in urban areas, poor households in rural areas and workers and laborers.
Create maximum conditions for the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor to build social housing in Quang Ngai
Information at the working session with the working delegation of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor on March 14, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Ngai province Tran Phuoc Hien said that the province will create maximum conditions for the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor to implement the construction of social housing in Quang Ngai.
"The province will focus on solving compensation and site clearance problems to hand over clean land to investors before June 30, 2025. The planned location for social housing construction is very favorable for workers and laborers because it is near VSIP Industrial Park and Tinh Phong Industrial Park. The traffic routes connecting to the social housing area will also be invested synchronously by the province 6 months before the project comes into operation" - Mr. Tran Phuoc Hien said.
The province commits to appraisal procedures such as fire prevention, fire fighting, environmental impact assessment, etc. to be done 1/3 of the time before the regulations. Mr. Le Van Nghia - Member of the Presidium, Head of the Trade Union Institution Project Management Board, Vietnam General Confederation of Labor - informed that if Quang Ngai province creates all favorable conditions, it is expected that the Trade Union social housing project in Tinh Phong commune will start construction in October 2025. In the immediate future, about 2 hectares will be built, with a completion time of about 6-9 months.
