Although the HCMC government has presented many solutions to address the situation, nearly 14,000 resettlement apartments and land plots earmarked for people affected by development projects in the city remain vacant, marking a waste of the city’s budget, according to Thanh Nien newspaper.

A resettlement apartment building in District 2. Nearly 14,000 resettlement apartments and land plots are unoccupied in HCMC

Of the total, 12,500 resettlement apartments are in Thu Thiem Peninsula in District 2 and more than 1,900 resettlement apartments and 529 land plots are in Vinh Loc B Commune of Binh Chanh District. The city had invested some VND1 trillion in the resettlement area in Vinh Loc B Commune from 2004 to 2008, but only a quarter of these apartments have found owners.

According to residents in the Vinh Loc B resettlement area, the vacant apartments have deteriorated as they are not maintained regularly. 

The resettlement area on Nguyen Huu Canh Street in Binh Thanh District faces the same fate. Hundreds of resettlement apartments remain uninhabited, while many households affected by projects nearby have nowhere to live.

Moreover, some 200 apartments in the Phu My resettlement area have yet to be filled despite being completed a long time ago.

Although thousands of resettlement apartments remain unoccupied, nearly 100,000 households in HCMC are in dire need of housing in the 2016-2020 period, including 10,000 State employees, 39,000 poor and near-poor households and 17,000 workers in industrial parks, according to a survey by the HCMC Institute for Development Studies.

Tran Trong Tuan, director of the HCMC Department of Construction, explained the redundancy of resettlement apartments, noting that most residents had earlier attempted to take over all the resettlement apartments on offer as the compensation amount for land redeemed from residents was on par with the State prices of these apartments, which were always lower than market levels, and the municipal government had agreed to offer these apartments to the residents at sharp discounts.

However, the compensation amount for those affected now matches the market price, so the resettlement apartments are also being priced higher. As a result, those who need to relocate now tend to take the money and choose apartments on their own.

Another reason is the regulation that developers must prepare resettlement apartments in advance before taking back land and relocating households, so many developers built resettlement apartments well in advance, leading to redundancy when affected residents refused the apartments.

According to Pham Sy Liem, former deputy minister of Construction and vice chairman of the Vietnam Federation of Civil Engineering Associations, the city redeems the land plots of households in the downtown area and asks them to move to resettlement areas in outlying districts, which is unfair for these households.

The local authorities and property developers want to provide affected households with resettlements rather than compensation as the resettlement apartment construction cost is lower than the compensation amount. However, these apartments cannot meet the demands of the local residents, leading to inefficient use of the city’s budget, Liem added.

To deal with the 14,000 resettlement apartments and land plots, the municipal Department of Construction had earlier proposed auctioning some of them, while others will be converted to social housing. The remainder will be set aside for upcoming projects. 

In August this year, the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment once again proposed the city government put up unsold resettlement apartments for auction to recover the capital.

The city has auctioned 5,200 resettlement apartments and land plots, including some 3,790 apartments belonging to a program to build 12,500 resettlement apartments for the Thu Thiem new urban area in District 2, with a starting price of more than VND2.3 billion each.

The city plans to continue selling 1,000 units in the Vinh Loc B resettlement area and 200 apartments in the Phu My resettlement area in District 7.

However, these apartments and land plots are unlikely to be sold, so the city government and competent agencies will reduce the prices for these apartments.

A manager at a real estate firm pointed out that these apartments and land plots can only be sold to homebuyers. If the city sells them at market prices, the property developers cannot earn a profit.

SGT