Promoting social housing development: New opportunities in a new context

On May 27, in Hanoi, at the workshop “Investment in social housing development: New context, new opportunities” organized by Investor Magazine, many key issues surrounding the social housing development strategy were raised, aiming to remove bottlenecks in policy mechanisms, opening up opportunities to strongly promote the social housing segment.

Overview of the workshop.

The workshop demonstrated a strong consensus among the parties in promoting the sustainable, synchronous and substantial development of social housing. With the improvement of institutions, administrative reform and reasonable financial policies, social housing can completely become a new driving force in the urban development strategy and ensuring social security in the coming decades.

Many policies but the effectiveness is not as expected

In his opening speech, Mr. Pham Duc Son, Editor-in-Chief of Nha Do Tu Magazine, emphasized: Social housing is not only an urgent need for people but also a driving force for investment, consumption, and ensuring progress and social justice. However, data from the Ministry of Construction shows that from 2021 to now, the whole country has only had 657 social housing projects implemented, completing about 15.6% of the target for the 2021-2025 period. The VND 120,000 billion credit package to support social housing policies is still being disbursed very slowly.

In that context, expectations are placed on new policies, including the Pilot Resolution on Special Mechanisms, the Housing Law 2023 and Decree 100/2024/ND-CP. This is considered a "push" for the strong development of the social housing segment, removing bottlenecks and creating motivation to attract investment enterprises.

Challenges that are hindering social housing

At the workshop, Dr. Nguyen Van Khoi - Chairman of the Vietnam Real Estate Association (VNREA) said that social housing is still facing many barriers from policy mechanisms, planning, to finance and administrative procedures. One of the prominent shortcomings is that localities have not integrated social housing targets into socio -economic development plans, there is a lack of clean land funds, legal problems with land use conversion, and the 10% profit margin is not attractive enough for investors in the context of escalating costs.

Dr. Nguyen Van Khoi, Chairman of Vietnam Real Estate Association, shared his opinion at the workshop.

In addition, determining land prices, granting construction permits, clearing land, etc. all take a lot of time, prolonging project implementation time, affecting the efficiency and capital turnover of enterprises.

For the people, especially young and low-income workers, access to social housing remains very difficult due to regulations on financial proof and lack of guidance on income confirmation from localities, especially for freelance workers.

Solutions towards synchronous and practical policies

To make social housing truly become a "pillar" in the social security strategy, Dr. Nguyen Van Khoi proposed a series of practical solutions:

Develop a social housing development plan with clear targets, integrated into annual and 5-year socio-economic development plans.

Prioritize planning and creating clean land funds, publicize project lists and annual implementation targets.

Stronger financial support, such as reducing investment loan interest rates to 2-4%/year, extending loan terms to 20-25 years; reducing VAT to 0-3% for social housing projects.

Control the market, handle the situation of "brokers" in social housing, ensure fairness and transparency.

Diversify capital sources, establish a social housing development fund from the state budget, government bonds, and mobilize social resources.

Procedural reform: The key to speed of implementation

At the workshop, the representative of the Ministry of Construction, Ms. Tong Thi Hanh, Director of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management (Ministry of Construction), shared that the implementation of the Project of 1 million social housing units has not yet met expectations due to institutional problems, cumbersome administrative procedures and difficulty in accessing preferential policies.

Director of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management (Ministry of Construction) Tong Thi Hanh spoke at the workshop.

Accordingly, the Draft Resolution submitted to the National Assembly is proposing a series of strong reforms:

Shorten the entire investment process to less than 12 months, cutting up to 70% of the current time.

Eliminate the step of establishing and appraising detailed planning tasks and replace them with indicators in zoning plans.

Exemption from construction permit for projects using sample and typical designs.

Apply shortened bidding, reducing up to 90% of time compared to conventional bidding.

Along with that, the selling price and rental price of social housing will be calculated by the investor and will be responsible for auditing and sending to the provincial agency for supervision - helping to increase initiative, transparency and save time.

A notable point in the new orientation is the focus on developing social housing for the under 35 age group, workers, civil servants, and laborers with real income, with clear priority policies. The establishment of the National Housing Fund will help create a stable source of social housing, used in rotation, and truly support disadvantaged groups.

According to nhandan.vn

Source: https://baolaocai.vn/day-manh-phat-trien-nha-o-xa-hoi-co-hoi-moi-trong-boi-canh-moi-post402446.html