On the morning of December 6, the Institute of Vocational Education Research (IVES, under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations) organized a workshop on "Innovation in management mechanisms to promote the development of social housing for rent".
Speaking at the opening of the conference, Mr. Nguyen Anh Quan - Director of the Institute for Vocational Education Research (IVES) said that the social housing model for rent has been placed in the top important position in the housing development strategy by many countries.
This model includes three main segments: social housing for rent, social housing for hire-purchase, and social housing for sale. These segments are all aimed at low-income people, helping them have access to suitable housing, whether through renting, hire-purchasing, or outright buying with loan support.
In Vietnam, under direct guidance from the Prime Minister, the Project to build 1 million social housing units in the 2021-2030 period has been implemented to meet the urgent needs of vulnerable groups. At the same time, legislative agencies have completed the Housing Law 2023, effective from August 1, 2024, along with many related legal documents, creating a more open and flexible legal corridor, strongly supporting the development of social housing areas nationwide.
In particular, the social housing rental segment plays a key role, especially in large cities and areas with industrial clusters employing many low-income workers. This is the optimal solution to solve the housing problem for the workforce, contributing to stabilizing life and promoting socio-economic development.
Assessing the development of social housing for rent in Vietnam, Dr. Tran Thi Hanh, Deputy Director of IVES, said that Vietnam is currently lacking in the supply of social housing for rent due to limited state budget, and businesses and private units do not want to invest in development due to low profits and fear of risks because the subjects according to regulations are low-income people.
In addition, the procedures for exemption from land use when implementing social housing construction are complicated and lengthy; it is difficult to borrow preferential credit because banks do not have a reliable enough basis to provide credit to investors when projects are delayed due to legal problems and site clearance; there is a lack of a mechanism to monitor the progress, quality and safety of the project, etc.
On the demand side, the problem is that there is no classification of social housing beneficiaries based on their financial capacity, conditions and incentives for each group. The State also does not have a policy to support low-income people to rent houses.
In particular, there is currently a lack of tools to ensure transparent and easily accessible information to help workers and low-income people access social housing for rent.
From this reality, Ms. Hanh raised the issue of the need for a specialized agency to manage social housing for rent.
Sharing the same view, many experts suggest that the State should soon instruct the Government to establish a national focal agency on the formation of mechanisms, management and have a specialized company directly build social housing, which is basically a model of social housing for rent.
Once established, this must be the agency that develops strategies and plans for social housing development in each locality and industrial cluster in each province and city in the long-term, medium-term and yearly periods... This plan must have sufficient mechanisms and power to implement.
