Solving the housing problem of young people and giving the city a brighter future

City governments should consider innovating housing supply and management systems and mechanisms to enable new citizens and young people to "buy good houses" on the basis of "renting good houses."

With the acceleration of new urbanization in our country, a large number of young people have joined major cities with dreams, but they face the problems of "cannot afford to buy a house" and "cannot afford to rent a house". Many people have to " "Drifting" in the city. In this regard, on August 31, Ni Hong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, stated at a press conference of the State Council Information Office that we should start to solve the housing problems of new citizens and young people.

This is a global problem

From the perspective of the development of urban affordable housing in my country, both the scale and volume of supply, and the areas and people covered are global Eye-catching. However, there is always a difficult-to-bridge contradiction between housing supply and demand for new citizens and young people, which affects urban development to a certain extent.

It should be acknowledged that ensuring housing for new citizens and young people is a global issue and a common problem faced by large and medium-sized cities in various countries. Even the Nordic countries, which attach great importance to housing for young people and immigrants, are still facing the embarrassing situation of finding a house.

Compared with urban aborigines, new citizens and young people have limited income and financial resources. It is often difficult for them to purchase housing in one step, and they have to rent to meet their housing needs. However, the market-oriented rental market is booming. Many young people spend most of their income on rent, or have to bear huge loans and lose confidence in life.

This requires strong support and policy innovation from the city government to solve their urgent needs and enable them to become the backbone of the city's future. In this regard, we should start from the supply side, increase government supply, and gradually ease the contradiction between supply and demand of affordable rental housing.

Generally speaking, city governments will be more inclined to build short-term high-yield projects such as commercial housing, office buildings, and industrial parks, compared with projects such as affordable rental housing that are purely investment and have slow returns.

To this end, it is necessary to reverse the problem of inaction and slowness of some city governments in affordable rental housing by strengthening assessment, supervision and accountability incentives, so that they can truly pay attention to affordable rental housing. The government should increase investment in land supply, investment and financing, and supporting policies, and try its best to meet the housing needs of new citizens and young people by increasing housing supply. It is necessary to innovate urban housing policies and put forward clear requirements for real estate developers to build supporting affordable rental housing, so that they have the motivation to supply more high-quality affordable rental housing.

Prescribe the right medicine and implement precise policies

Of course, we must also target the housing needs of new citizens and young people, prescribe the right medicine and implement precise policies.

On the one hand, many new citizens and young people cannot afford to rent or buy ideal housing. On the other hand, some cities have built a large number of affordable rental housing, but the occupancy rate is very low, and the satisfaction of renters is not high. Therefore, it is necessary to solve the mismatch between supply and demand of affordable rental housing so that more housing resources can be released into the rental market and win the popularity of new citizens and young people.

The government must realize that young people have different needs for housing at each stage of life, and cannot blindly pursue indicators such as construction scale, housing area, and house type based on wishful thinking.

At the same time, it is necessary to build and manage the affordable rental housing well. We must strengthen and innovate the urban affordable rental housing management system, conduct dynamic and precise management of affordable rental housing, and effectively solve the problem of "can't get in but can't get out" The question of “can we advance or not”.

Some new citizens and young people have moved into affordable rental housing, but refuse to exit when the conditions are no longer met, making the already stretched housing supply even worse. The recurrence of this problem is related to the management model of affordable rental housing that emphasizes supply but not management, and focuses on the front end but not the back end. It also means that the government must strengthen and innovate the entire process management of urban affordable rental housing.

In particular, it is necessary to introduce emerging information technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence technology, strengthen the information management of affordable rental housing, and conduct precise management of the supply, operation, maintenance and exit of housing to avoid waste of housing resources and mismatch.

Give full play to the professional capabilities of market entities

In addition, it is necessary to innovate the supply mechanism of affordable rental housing, introduce real estate investment trust funds (REITs), the sharing economy, government and society Innovative business models such as capital cooperation (PPP), on the basis of increasing the supply of affordable rental housing, continue to improve its operation and management level, and enable new citizens and young people to gradually transition to buying houses on the basis of renting.

Affordable housing is a public service that the city government should provide, but its supply and management entities do not necessarily have to be handled by government departments themselves. Introducing professional institutions and enterprises into the affordable housing market and giving full play to the professional capabilities of market entities will help activate affordable housing management.

“Those who have permanent property have perseverance.” New citizens and young people all have the dream of settling down and establishing a career in the city. This means that city governments should consider innovating housing supply and management systems and mechanisms to enable new citizens and young people to "buy good houses" on the basis of "renting good houses."