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Chongqing may be a bit late in implementing a subsidized housing program. But with the kick-off of an ambitious plan that will accommodate millions of residents, the biggest mainland city is now on the express lane. Li Tao reports.

Xiao Xia, 25, has been working in Chongqing for a few years. The five-member family from neighboring Sichuan province - Xiao and his wife, child and parents - settled in Chongqing earlier this year, as the municipality's first batch of public rental homes was launched in the first half.

Looking similar to most of the commercial real estate currently on the market, the apartment Xiao was admitted to is an 80-square-meter unit with three bedrooms and one living room. It costs Xiao only 800 yuan a month - around half of what it would cost at market rates for privately-owned ones.

What's more, if Xiao prefers, he can buy the apartment in five years.

Xiao said he was lucky to become the first group on board in Chongqing. "Once we heard the news, we applied for public rental housing immediately."

In fact, it is not that difficult to get lucky in Chongqing. In the first round of the lottery in March, the Chongqing local government received a total of 22,317 eligible applications, among which 15,281 were allocated homes immediately, representing a 68.5 percent success rate.

Tang Huali, deputy director of the Chongqing Public Rental Housing Administration, told China Daily that if an applicant fails to be chosen after three rounds of applications, the unlucky person will be assigned a place automatically.

Unlike most Chinese cities which filter residents by their household income, the program in Chongqing opens the door to any local family whose per capita housing floor space is below 13 square meters.

The municipality established an even lower threshold for people from outside the city. Any adult migrant workers, university or technical school graduate students that have a stable job in the city are all qualified to apply for public housing.

Chongqing's generosity is backed by its three-year public rental housing project, which is tipped to build 40 million square meters of apartment buildings from 2010 to 2012 to house 30 percent low and middle-income people who are over the age of 18 and live in the city.

This year alone, it will open 10 million square meters of public housing for applications, which is nearly half of the total area of commercial housing sold in the city proper in 2010.

All 21 development projects in the blueprint, no matter whether downtown or in the suburbs, will be connected by the city's 16 metro and subway lines, bus networks, as well as supporting facilities.

Mayor Huang Qifan told a group of Hong Kong media in October that the Chongqing government aims to solve the living issue for as many as 2 million people in the city under the program - by providing affordable rents and reasonable prices so residents can buy a home of their own.

"We have wound up three lottery rounds for public rental housing this year and we did not find any fraud or corruption" said Huang.

The program offers homes ranging from 35 to 80 square meters to accommodate the needs for one single graduate student to families of four and above. Dwellers will also be able to change to a home of another size subject to the amount of people in them.

The tenants are subject to tight scrutiny to prevent subleases as these public homes are only rented for 9 to 11 yuan per square meter depending on the location, according to the mayor

Although renters are able to purchase their apartment five years after living there, they are only allowed to resell it to the government at its purchase price to stop speculators from gaining profit through the program.

"We are trying to control the comprehensive costs to below 3,000 yuan per square meter," said Tang, the deputy director of the program.

"If nearby properties were sold at around 8,000 to 9,000 yuan per square meter, our public rental housing sold to our tenants would probably be around 4,000 to 5,000 yuan per square meter," he added.

According to the mayor, Huang, public housing will cost the government a total of 140 billion yuan, of which 60 billion yuan will be subsidized by the government while the other 80 billion yuan will depend on various sources of financing.

However, the total rent that the government will be able to collect from the program will only amount to around 4 billion yuan a year, according to Tang, which is just enough to cover the interest fees of the financing.

According to the Chongqing Finance Bureau, the local fiscal revenue of the municipality stood at 199.1 billion yuan in 2010, up 70.8 percent from a year earlier.

Revenue exceeded 200 billion yuan for the first time in September 2011, which increased by 57.3 percent to reach 204.3 billion yuan for the first nine months of the year.

Five year later when people start purchasing their public homes, the government can start repaying these loans, Tang said.

litao@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 10/22/2011 page2)