Building houses for all

Premier Wen Jiabao's renewed emphasis on offering public rental housing foreshadows the government's relentless efforts to provide low- and middle-income families with affordable accommodation at a time when many ordinary people, especially low-income families, cannot even dream of entering the housing market.

At its executive meeting chaired by Wen on Monday, the State Council, the country's Cabinet, ordered local governments to build more affordable houses, especially low-rental housing units, in urban areas for low-income families, newly employed houseless laborers and migrant workers with stable jobs. Such houses should be about 40 square meters and their rents below market levels.

Though the State Council has promised to increase subsidies for such housing projects, it has urged local governments to allocate more funds for them. For some years now, the central government has been urging local authorities to build more affordable houses, but the latter have made little progress on this front, blaming the lack of funds for their failure. To solve the problem of insufficient funds, the central government has allowed local governments to borrow money from financial institutions through qualified local government financing vehicles and increase their land sale premiums and bond issuances.