Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan has urged local governments to
further improve the low-rent housing system to cover more
low-income urban families.
Zeng made the call at a national conference on urban housing
held in Beijing on Friday and Saturday.
Housing is directly related to people's livelihood. In some
low-income families in cities, however, family members have only
less than 10 square meters per person to live in, Zeng said.
The average housing area for per urbanite stood at 27 square
meters in 2006, according to statistics.
Zeng said local governments should strive to offer adequate
housing to low-income families with multiple means such as building
more affordable apartments and reconstruct shantytowns and old
residential areas.
Local governments should earmark funds for low-rent housing in
their budgets, and at least 10 percent of the proceeds of land
transfer should be used for low-rent housing, Zeng said.
Meanwhile, local proceeds from the public housing provident fund
should be invested in the building of low-rent apartments.
According to Zeng, all low-income urbanites should be covered by
the low-rent housing system by the end of 2010.
He said the recent price hikes of apartments had a negative
impact on the interests of the public. He called on local
governments to stabilize the housing price and boost the healthy
development of the real estate market.
Housing prices in 70 major Chinese cities were up a record 7.5
percent in July from the same month last year.
An industry group predicted that housing prices in Chinese
cities will continue to rise in the third quarter this year despite
government pledges to make housing more affordable for low-income
families.
(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2007)
