SHENZHEN will start building 73,000 government-subsidized apartments by the end of October with 10,000 to be finished by the end of the year.
The apartments include 35,000 affordable commercial homes for professionals and sandwich families, and 21,000 public rental houses.
The government will allocate 14.8 billion yuan (US$2.25 billion) for the project.
The prices of affordable commercial apartments will be no higher than 70 percent of market prices and most public rental homes will be in sizes between 40 and 50 square meters.
At a meeting Wednesday, Mayor Xu Qin said the government would give priority to building public rental houses to solve the housing shortage for new employees and college graduates employed by companies and institutions. The city was trying to build a housing system mainly supported by public rental houses.
According to the plan, Shenzhen would build 240,000 government-subsidized apartments between 2011 and 2015, 10 times the number in the 11th Five-Year Program between 2006 and 2010.
Statistics show the average price of commercial apartments in Shenzhen was 19,424 yuan per square meter in March, a fall of 5 percent compared with February.
(Han Ximin)
