Illustrative image. (Source: VNA)HCM City(VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City will adopt incentives to encourage the private sectorto develop social housing for sale and rent due to the city’s shortage of affordablehomes for low-income families and industrial park workers.
According to themunicipal People’s Committee, there are about 476,000 young families that donot own a home or are living with their parents or relatives and 156,000 low-incomehouseholds – including 18,000 of which were displaced by local projects who werenot eligible for compensation or whose compensation was not sufficient topurchase a house.
The city alsoestimated that it will be home to around 400,000 workers from the three industrialparks, requiring some 280,000 apartments, by 2020. However the city could onlysupply a total of 40,000 homes last year.
By 2020, it aims tobuild about 20,000 new social housing apartments and 35,000 others exclusivelyfor workers at industrial parks.
Despite many effortsmade by the southern hub to build social housing, a number of challenges remainhampering the development of this type of property. Chief among them is thelimited land resources for social housing and a lack of long-term loans fordevelopers of affordable housing projects or those in need of affordable homes.
At the same time, anumber of projects have suffered lengthy delays in land clearance and otherbarriers causing slow progress. The city also has few projects offering studioapartments of 25-30 sqm fetching at 300-400 million VND per unit or units ofthe same size to let that are suitable for low-income earners.
Therefore, the city islooking to improve the diversity of affordable homes for low-income familiesand accommodation for workers, while providing long-term soft loans with a maturityof more than 10 years to attract developers to these projects. –VNA
VNA
