Vice Chairman of the HCMC People’s Committee Tran Vinh Tuyen said the Southern city has a surplus of 7,000 houses in urban areas and resettlement areas in District 2, District 7 and Binh Chanh for local residents who need to be relocated.
Lots of resettlement apartments in HCMC have been left vacan for many reasons. The city government is planning to put these units up for auction and use the money for purposes such as developing infrastructure system.
Many low-income people are in need of social housing in HCMC.
Some of the resettlement apartments are reportedly in poor condition. Besides, relocated people cannot find jobs in the new neighborhoods, therefore some of them preferred taking compensation than being forced to move to a resettlement apartment building.
Data of the Department of Construction shows nearly 134,000 social apartments would be needed from 2011 to 2020.
According to the HCMC Institute for Development, around 81,000 households and individuals were estimated to be in need of social housing in 2016-2020 period.
The agency said HCMC has built about 8,000 social housing apartments, and 11 buildings are under construction, which are expected to provide approximately 10,200 apartments in near future.
Some social housing projects are lagging behind schedule and can not deliver the apartments on time to buyers.
Various real estate developers said they were not interested in social housing, since 20 percent of the apartments for rent and 60 percent for sale must have their prices approved by the Government, and developer can only freely operate the remaining 20 per cent. In addition, the expected profit rate of a project would be no more than 10 percent.
The department has suggested HCMC should ask the Government to arrange low-interest loans from the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies for developers and buyers.
