Better regulation of affordable housing will help it fulfill purpose

THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF YULIN in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province built an affordable housing community for local residents in 2014, and over 2,000 families have purchased apartments there. However, due to the lack of infrastructure, the community is not suitable for living in and over 90 percent of the apartments remain unoccupied. Beijing News comments:

Affordable housing is meant to be both affordable and livable. The affordable housing project in Yulin fails to serve its purpose since people cannot live in the properties as the local government failed to provide the necessary infrastructure for the community.

Did the government not take the infrastructure into consideration when drafting the plan for the community? Many officials participated in the plan; did none of them raise the issue?

What happened in Yulin is not an isolated incident. For a long time, problems have been reported with affordable housing projects in many cities nationwide, not just the lack of infrastructure, but also poor construction quality, exceedingly high prices, and incomplete paperwork. Reports about problems with affordable housing projects appear almost every year, but still the problems persist. Do local government officials not learn from the errors of their predecessors?

Affordable housing as a policy is designed to help those on low incomes realize the dream of having their own houses, but in reality they do not benefit from the affordable housing supposedly built to meet their needs.

More than 2,000 families have purchased apartments in the affordable housing community in Yulin, and they have in effect lost money as they cannot live in their homes. Who will compensate them or their losses? The affordable housing was built with subsidies from the government, who will compensate the taxpayers for their losses?

The problems with the affordable housing in Yulin reminds us, once again, of the need for stricter regulations on affordable housing. The whole process, from the selecting of the land to planning and construction, should be properly regulated, so that the officials responsible for any misdeeds or wrong decisions are held accountable.

Only in this way will we prevent the ridiculous situation of affordable housing built without infrastructure from being repeated in the future.