Zhuyuan Community, one of the "problem-solving residence communities".

On October 9, 1997, then-Mayor of Zhongshan Huang Ziqiang received the “UN Habitat Scroll of Honor” award from official of The United Nations Human Settlements Programme. The world’s top prize in human habitat field was the greatest affirmation of Zhongshan city’s “sustainable development of residential construction and management”.

But 10 years before, Zhongshan had already started resolving housing difficulties for citizens. In the 20 years’ time after winning the “UN Habitat Scroll of Honor”, Zhongshan kept exploring housing security and improving living environment.　　

Construction of ‘problem-solving houses’ starts

Many citizens brought the housing issues forward to the mayor receiving day in 1986.

In the same year, more than 7,000 families in central city were of 8 sqm or less per capita living space. To resolve living problems for these citizens, the mayor meeting held on January 17, 1987 deliberated the housing problem occurred in central city and established the “Housing Problem Resolution Leading Group”.

The construction of the first “problem-solving residence communities” - Jiangpan New Village and Boyuan New Village - started in 1987. In 1989, the two new villages with 2,275 houses were put into use and placed 1,574 families.

From 1987 to 1997, the city totally arranged houses for 7,288 families and resolved their housing difficulties.　　

Housing security covers migrant workers

Zhongshan always attaches importance to housing security work.

From 1987 to 2005, the municipal government invested nearly 1.3bn yuan on placement of over 8,000 families with housing difficulty. From 2006 to 2010, the government reinforced housing security and arranged another 290mn yuan for construction of security houses, renovation of public houses and rural dangerous houses, and relevant subsidies. From 2011 to 2015, Zhongshan further increased investment on affordable housing construction with completion of 1.5bn yuan of housing security investment.

Zhongshan was also one of the regions that enlarged housing security coverage for migrant workers. Early in 2012, Zhongshan had implemented policies in terms of “floating population apply for public rental housing”. In 2013, Zhongshan combined low-rent houses, state-owned properties and public rental houses as “public rental housing security” and introduced relevant threshold regulations, according to which newly-employed staffs with no houses and migrant workers were included in housing security.