Why are Bac Ninh and Hai Phong leading in developing social housing?

According to the Project to develop 1 million social housing units, by 2025, the country needs to complete 428,000 units. In the context of scarce supply and high apartment prices, social housing is also considered one of the most important solutions to remove supply and cool down housing prices in large cities.

However, currently, most localities with high housing demand such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang are still struggling to realize their assigned goals. Even from 2021 to now, some localities have not started or completed any social housing projects such as Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh, Quang Ninh, Quang Ngai, Long An...

At an event with Ho Chi Minh City leaders in May, a worker representative said that "social housing is only on TV", not knowing where the project is or how to borrow capital. In response to this opinion, Ho Chi Minh City Chairman Phan Van Mai also admitted that the supply of this housing segment is not much because the projects are stuck with procedures, land funds, or profits that are not attractive to businesses to participate.

Similarly, in the past two years, Hanoi has only had one social housing project in Nam Tu Liem district open for sale and started construction on a 280-apartment project in Me Linh district at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, according to the assigned task, the capital needs to complete 18,700 social housing units by the end of 2025. Faced with this situation, the Chairman of Hanoi has requested departments and branches to get involved to start at least one social housing project before October.

Currently, only a few provinces and cities such as Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Hai Phong, and Binh Duong have initially achieved positive results in building social housing. Of which, Bac Ninh has completed and is continuing to implement 31 projects with a total of 22,000 apartments. The province aims to complete about 21,000 apartments in the short term by 2025.

The average selling price of social housing in Bac Ninh in recent times has been about 11 million VND per square meter, including VAT, according to the provincial Department of Construction. During his visit to the housing project for workers in Yen Phong district last year, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also suggested using Bac Ninh as a model, then learning from experience and expanding to other localities in developing social housing.

According to Mr. Nguyen Tuan Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Construction of Bac Ninh, the demand for social housing and public housing in the province is currently very large when there are 12 concentrated industrial parks with nearly 400,000 workers, of which about half come from other localities.

Therefore, according to Mr. Dung, the People's Committee of Bac Ninh province has directed and developed many mechanisms and policies to attract social housing development such as supporting 50% of the investment costs for technical infrastructure construction within the project's fence. In addition to allocating 20% ​​of land in the detailed planning project for residential areas in urban areas of level I, II, III, the Department of Construction of Bac Ninh also arranges land for social housing construction with other planning.

In fact, lack of land is also the biggest challenge that many localities face when developing social housing, due to the lack of accurate calculations of supply, demand, and investment capital.

Currently, Bac Ninh also has a provincial Steering Committee for Social Housing Management and Development; as well as provincial working groups on planning - construction, removing difficulties and obstacles for businesses.

Hai Phong is expected to complete and launch 80% of the total 15,400 social housing apartments as assigned by 2025. To concretize these figures, Hai Phong Vice Chairman Nguyen Duc Tho said that the city prioritizes maximizing the exploitation of inefficiently used urban land, polluting production facilities that need to be relocated, and poor quality housing areas. Regarding planning, Hai Phong also prepares orientations for the social housing system throughout the city with the view that it must be an urban area, a housing area with a synchronous technical and social infrastructure system.

In addition to the established policies, Hai Phong has implemented additional mechanisms and policies to support investors in developing technical infrastructure outside the project fence, as well as shortening the time for administrative procedures, speeding up site clearance and land handover. Since last year, Hai Phong has started 7 projects and all are being constructed at a very urgent pace to ensure completion within 24 months.

Hai Phong Vice Chairman shared that the city has also stepped up propaganda to help people eliminate the habit of "living in houses on the ground" and the mindset that social housing is for "disadvantaged - low-income" people. "This is to form the habit that social housing is a segment with good quality and prices suitable for affordability due to support from the state," said Mr. Tho.

Along with that, Secretary of the City Party Committee Le Tien Chau said that Hai Phong is also the first locality in the country to have a resolution on the project of developing social housing combined with solving housing for households living in old apartment buildings.

This project aims to build social housing areas with reasonable costs, apartments with suitable prices, ensuring that people living in old apartment buildings can afford to buy. The city plans to be able to solve the housing problem for about 5,700 households living in old apartment buildings that cannot be renovated or repaired in the next two years.

Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam, General Director of GHome Joint Stock Company - a company specializing in developing social housing, also commented that Hai Phong and Bac Ninh are leading in building this type of product thanks to the determination and drastic implementation of the leadership team. Along with that, according to Mr. Nam, these two localities are also successful thanks to owning many industrial parks, with a large mechanical migration of workers from other localities.

This expert assessed that the policy of supporting the cost of building technical infrastructure inside the project fence of Bac Ninh or Bac Giang helps reduce part of the selling price of social housing for people.

Regarding Hai Phong, Mr. Nam said that the resolution on combining the construction of social housing and the renovation of old apartments has brought double benefits to this city. "It has helped improve the appearance of Hai Phong city in recent years and brought a large fund of low-cost housing for people and workers here," the General Director of GHome shared.

According to Mr. Nam, other localities are not as determined and do not have the above resolution, so implementation is still poor, typically Hanoi. He likened the capital to the fact that there are still many old apartment buildings as "warts" on the urban landscape that cannot be removed.

In addition to Hai Phong and Bac Ninh, Binh Duong is also ambitiously building double the number of social housing assigned by the Government, with about 155,000 apartments and 5,000 townhouses by 2030.

Binh Duong plans to allocate 470 hectares of land with a total investment of VND84,800 billion, prioritizing non-budgetary capital. The Southern industrial capital has also assigned the Department of Construction to complete a set of criteria for developing rental housing (boarding houses) into social housing. Accordingly, boarding house businesses are facilitated to change land use purposes, renovate and upgrade housing areas according to model designs to improve the quality of life of tenants.

Recently, this locality also has a leading enterprise in the country in development, the Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (Becamex). After ten years of implementation, Becamex has built about 47,500 social housing units, reaching over 70% of the plan. In the near future, this enterprise will start more projects in Thuan An City and Thu Dau Mot City (Binh Duong).