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China working on law to ensure affordable housing

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-04 11:04

BEIJING: China has been working on drafting a law to ensure people with moderate or low-incomes could rent or buy houses at cheaper prices.

Shen Weixing, a member on the expert panel for drafting the Housing Guaranteeing Law, said in an interview with the press early this week that wide coverage is a fundamental principle of the law.

According to Shen, a draft of the law incorporating?theoretical guidelines and practices from Shenzhen city, South China's Guangdong province, has been submitted to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development for further discussion.

"With the law, families of the needy and those with low income could be guaranteed of habitation via low-rent housing scheme, though they could not possess or fully own the rights to the housing they live in," said Shen, a professor with the School of Law School with the Beijing-based Tsinghua University.

Apart from low-rent housing scheme, housing with public ownership will be another form to guarantee the rights of habitation for people with varying income, said Shen.

Shen explained the needy could rent housing at low prices via the low-rent housing scheme, while those who are better off than the needy could buy affordable flats, price-limit housing, or even purchase flats via the accumulative public funds.

According to Shen, the draft law has also laid down detailed rules on floor space of affordable housing, related service facilities, safety and quality standards, as well as?locations of such houses.

Professor Wang Zhenmin with the Law School of Tsinghua University, who has also participated in the efforts to drafting the law, said the draft law also stipulated that local government officials would be held accountable if they fail to provide affordable houses for ordinary people.

Wang failed to elaborate on the punishments.

China liberalized its housing market in 1998, and housing prices kept soaring ever since. The central authorities encouraged local government to build more affordable and low-cost houses in an effort to address housing price hikes.

Many local governments would defy central government's call to build more affordable houses which are believed to generate less revenue and contribute less to gross domestic product in the regions concerned, using lack of capital and land resources as excuses.

Local government officials are not held responsible even if they have failed to implement central government's policies due to a lack of relevant laws.

At annual sessions of local legislative bodies that opened in January, local governments across the country renewed vows to build more affordable houses and provide housing people with limited income.