HCM City eyes more social housing developments

A social housing project with 1,000 apartments is under construction in Thủ Đức City. Photo sggp.org.vn

HCM CITY — HCM City’s districts want vacant lands available in industrial parks, export processing zones and high-tech parks to be used for affordable housing for workers.

The People’s Committee of Bình Tân said migrants make up half the district’s population, and 300,000 of them lack housing.

Preferential policies and mechanisms were needed to attract investors in social housing, which requires a lot of money for land, Vũ Chí Kiên, deputy chairman of the People’s Committee, said.

The city should offer them legal assistance to speed up construction progress of projects, he said.

Seven social housing projects with more than 4,000 units are behind schedule due to procedural obstacles, including workers’ housing at the Tân Tạo Industrial Park and Pouyuen Việt Nam Company.

Thủ Đức City began work on several social housing projects as part of HCM City’s plan to build one million affordable units for workers in 2021-25. Last year it began one each in Thạnh Mỹ Lợi and Long Trường wards with 1,000 and 726 apartments.

Thủ Đức plans a social housing project on 90 hectares at the High-Tech Park to accommodate more than 80,000 workers.

It is working with industrial parks and export processing zones to use their vacant plots for building housing.

A number of projects in the outlying district of Bình Chánh are at the land clearance stage to pave the way for construction.

The district plans a 30ha social housing development at the Vĩnh Lộc B resettlement area.

The District 7 People’s Committee wants city authorities to approve social housing development on nine plots of land.

Hồ Xuân Lâm, deputy chairman of the city Labour Federation, said the city should use resettlement houses that are not occupied as accommodation for workers.

Besides, it should offer low-interest loans to landlords to upgrade their boarding houses where hundreds of thousands of workers live, he said.

A survey done by the federation in 2020 found that around 1.3 million workers were in dire need of affordable accommodation.

More than 83 per cent of workers rent private rooms to live, according to a report by the city Department of Construction in 2020. —VnExpress News