Up to this point in 2024, in Ho Chi Minh City, there is only one social housing project that has broken ground with an area of 23,100.8m2, a scale of 1,456 social housing units for rent. This is a project invested by Le Thanh Company, a company specializing in developing social housing in Ho Chi Minh City. And Mr. Le Huu Nghia - Director of Le Thanh Company told a very unbelievable but true story that in order to break ground on this project, just for the legal procedures, it took his company 5 years to complete.
There are still many unbelievable stories like that because the Project "Investing in building at least 1 million social housing apartments for low-income people and industrial park workers in the period of 2021 - 2030" as Decision No. 388/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister, up to this point, there are still 3 basic problems that cannot be resolved: land fund, policies and preferential loans.
This leads to the fact that this Project, as Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh commented at a conference to remove difficulties and promote social housing development in March 2024, "still does not meet the set requirements".
According to the Ministry of Construction, the mechanisms, policies and preferential credit sources for social housing project investors are not attractive enough. The procedures for buying, leasing and renting social housing are still complicated.
To solve at least 3 basic problems to solve the supply problem as mentioned above, experts say, we need to have a "new mindset" about policies and legal procedures. For example, how to make it take businesses only about 5 months to complete procedures instead of taking up to 5 years like Mr. Le Huu Nghia's story.
In fact, “new thinking” is what Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has required ministries, sectors and localities to have and change since the beginning of the year. That is, are the mechanisms and policies correct and accurate? If the mechanisms and policies are correct and accurate but have not been implemented, what are the subjective and objective reasons? How to resolve the problem, what should each subject do?
Another “new thinking” is that although housing is one of the three pillars of social security, according to Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Sinh, many localities have “not paid attention” to this pillar of social security for a long time. Many localities have not had any social housing projects started since 2021.
In order for the goal of 1 million social housing apartments to soon become a reality, ministries, branches and localities must roll up their sleeves, urgently and resolutely take action, and must take action with the mindset of putting themselves in the shoes of others, "in me there is you, in you there is me", putting themselves in the shoes of those who do not have a place to live to act" as directed by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, then we can hope for results!
