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Housing policy

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-13 08:02

The inconvenience residents living in affordable housing are suffering is in stark contrast to the luxury housing for celebrities provided by some local governments. The message is that some governments show more concern for the rich, and even use taxpayers' money to please them, while giving a cold-shoulder to the interests of low-income residents.

Hangzhou, capital city of East China's Zhejiang province, will provide more than 2 million square meters of social security housing for talents, including artists, entrepreneurs, even government officials, who can buy these houses for half the market price.

The government of this city, well known for its beautiful lake and scenery, describes this as a strategy to attract high caliber talents. Another city, Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong province, provided housing subsidies to entrepreneurs with the same excuse.

The policymakers in these cities are too concerned with their cities' economic growth to think about the social impact of their policies.

However, these policymakers should realize that they are using money that should have been used to help the poor with their living conditions to serve the rich.

It is against the principles of equality and fairness, particularly as low-income residents are complaining about the poor social services and inconvenient locations of their residential areas.

It should not be difficult for these policymakers to make a choice between whether taxpayers' money should be spent on improving the quality of life for the poor or used to please the rich. The adoption of such policies not only point to the mentality of the policymakers, it also suggests a lack of supervision over policymaking and a lack of respect for taxpayers.

Has public opinion been solicited for such housing projects? Have such policies been deliberated by the deputies to the local people's congress?

Then there is the issue of the transparency of the policymaking by these local governments. There is no report about how these policies were made. Much is still to be done to optimize the mechanism of policymaking in local governments.

There should be procedures that policymakers have to follow, such as soliciting public opinion or discussions by deputies to local people's congress, before policies are adopted. These will remind local policymakers of their obligations as civil servants to keep the interests of ordinary residents in mind when it comes to the spending taxpayers' money.

By reasonably spending taxpayers' money, local governments will help realize the redistribution of social wealth in favor of the have-nots and thus narrow the widening income gap.

Housing subsidies for the rich are against this principle.

(China Daily 12/13/2010 page8)