ANOTHER 240,000 government-subsidized apartments will be built in the next five years to accommodate low-and medium-income families, Chinese-language newspapers reported yesterday.
Quoting a report produced by the city s housing authorities, the newspapers said the number of new subsidized apartments nearly doubled in the five years to 2010, during which 140,000 government homes were built, the Shenzhen Evening News said.
According to the planned development of government-subsidized housing between 2011 and 2015, the scheme would be expanded to cover medium-income families.
Currently, low-income families are those whose annual income was less than 23,252 yuan (US$3,400) for two consecutive years and total assets of an eligible family not exceeding 320,000 yuan. Such families are eligible to buy or rent subsidized apartments.
But the report did not specify the eligibility criteria for medium-income families.
The new subsidized homes would be built in areas with good public facilities and easy access to public transport such as the central area of Bao an District and the Qianhai area in Nanshan District.
The government low-price and low-rent housing scheme has come under criticism because the apartments in the scheme were usually built in remote areas with poor public facilities and transport.
Earlier media reports had said that in the past few years many families eligible for low-rent government homes had refused to move in because there was no access to public transport.
Some people said transport expenses would have outweighed the rents in good locations if they moved into the cheap government housing in a Yantian neighborhood.
In 2009 alone, more than half the 9,000 government-subsidized apartments remained vacant. (SD News)
