Experts believe that this will ease the demand for accommodation and put an end to the waste of real estate resources.

Huynh Thanh Khiet, deputy director of the HCM City Construction Department, said social housing projects are exempted from land rent when calculating construction costs. However, as agencies still count compensation costs for site clearance, the selling price of social housing remains high. 

Meanwhile, each social housing apartment must meet the requirement of having an area of 20-70 sq m.      

At the 38.4 hectare Binh Khanh resettlement area, only 30 percent of apartments can satisfy the requirement, and they are located in different buildings. Placing social housing units such as these is not feasible.

Le Huu Nghia, CEO of Le Thanh Company, which has invested in many social housing projects in HCMC, warned that many problems need to be solved when converting resettlement apartments into social housing.

First, while each social apartment must not have an area of over 70 sq m, resettlement apartments do not have restrictions in size. What will happen if realtors want to turn resettlement apartments of over 70 sq m into a social apartment?

Second, resettlement housing construction costs are high. Will social housing buyers accept the high selling prices of VND30 million per sq m or higher?

Third, resettlement apartments, after a long period of being left idle, have been degrading. To turn them into social housing, realtors will have to spend money to upgrade the apartments, and calculate carefully to set reasonable selling prices.

In order to have thousands of resettlement housing, in 2017, the municipal authorities thought of putting the housing up for auction. However, there were legal obstacles as well as an unreasonable auction model.

When approving the housing development program in HCM City for the 2021-2030 period, the People’s Committee mentioned converting resettlement houses into social housing.

The local authorities planned to change part of state-owned resettlement housing products into social housing and use the social housing inventory to settle poor households’ demand for accommodation.

This was believed to be the "killing two birds with one stone" solution. However, the local authorities anticipated that many legal problems would arise.

Lawyer Nguyen Duc Chanh from the HCM City Bar Association said the conversion from resettlement to social housing was legalized in Article 124 of the 2023 Housing Law, which is expected to take effect in several days. 

Anh Phuong - Chi Tai