The quality of the housing occupied by the poor should serve as
a vital criterion in evaluating the performance of local government
officials, a senior urban construction official said yesterday.
The proposal represents the latest step by the central
government to ensure poor urbanites are sheltered from the red-hot
property market.
"We have made clear-cut goals (in housing the poor) that are
easy to quantify and (to use) to judge local governments," Shen
Jianguo, director of the residential property division under the
Ministry of Construction, said yesterday.
A State Council meeting pledged last month to make houses
available at low rents or to provide subsidies to help poor people
in large and medium-sized cities by the end of this year.
The coverage will be extended to 10 million low-income families
across the country by 2010.
These efforts mark the first time a top government body, instead
of an individual ministry, has developed a detailed housing plan
targeting the urban poor.
While different goals are subject to different deadlines, "it's
easy for local governments to achieve their goals by cutting their
tasks into several different stages," Shen said in an online
interview yesterday.
Shen did not mention how officials who fall short of their goals
would be punished.
The new evaluation criterion comes as central authorities have
struggled to push through housing policies for the poor because
local governments have reluctant to rein in their profitable
property markets.
While lauding the government's determination, experts and the
public doubt whether the new rules will have much effect on local
governments.
By the end of 2006, 512 of 657 cities on the Chinese mainland
had initiated affordable housing strategies, but only 268,000
households of the low-income families nationwide, have benefited
from them.
Yi Xianrong, an expert with the China Academy of Social
Sciences, said the government should provide subsidies and
favorable interest and tax rates for low and medium income earners,
which account for about 70 percent of the total population.
(China Daily September 19, 2007)