VietNamNet Bridge – Upgrading apartments and building new ones for poor households and students will be a top priority under HCM City's housing development programme for the 2012-15 period.

Trinh Dinh Dung, Minister of Construction, said last Saturday that the city and the ministry would work together to encourage private investors to pour money into low-income housing and resolve problems related to high land prices and bank interest rates.

Owners and landlords would also be encouraged to charge affordable rental prices.

Under the programme, all developers of commercial housing projects will be required to set aside 20 per cent of land for social housing.

Commercial banks and private construction companies would also be encouraged to join the effort.

Le Hoang Quan, chairman of HCM City's People's Committee, said that upgrading and replacing apartments was a top priority.

The city has 2 million apartments serving 6.5 million people, and half of them are poor in quality.

By 2015, the city plans to provide total floor place of 2.7 million square metres for the poor and for people with low incomes.

Of that amount, 0.6 million square metres of floor place would be used for student housing (serving 100,000 people), while 0.8 million square metres (93,000 places of residence) will be allotted for unskilled labourers.

The building of apartments under 25 square metres each will also be allowed.

In addition, 17,500 apartments will be built to sell or rent to manual workers, migrant labourers and low-income groups, and more than 25 apartment blocks will be built as part of resettlement projects.

The city will also construct more hospitals, schools and markets in resettlement areas. In addition, it will create preferential credit, repayment and land tax policies to encourage private enterprises to build student dormitories.

A recent survey by the Ministry of Education and Training found that only 22 per cent of the country's more than 600,000 university students had dormitory accommodation, and that many disadvantaged students lived in deplorable conditions.

VietNamNet/VNS