Dong Nai (VNS/VNA) - The southern province of Dong Nai solicitedinvestment in building houses for low-income earners, heard at a conference on November16.

Speaking at the social housing investment promotion and development conference,Vo Tan Duc, deputy chairman of the province People’s Committee, said despitehis administration’s focus on social housing for low-income earners, supply hasyet to meet demand.

The province has 31 industrial parks with 410,000 workers, who requireaccommodation, he said.

There would be more IPs, further increasing the need for workers' housing, hesaid.

According to the Dong Nai Confederation of Labour, the province has over 1.2million employees, mainly migrants from other parts of the country. Therefore,the demand for accommodation among them remains huge. Most of the workers rentboarding houses in residential areas near industrial parks.

The province targets building 10,000 houses in 2021-25 at a cost of nearly 10.2trillion VND (441.8 million USD), with the funds coming from public resources,private enterprises and others.

Nine projects are being developed on an area of more than 52ha with more than8,000 houses.

At the conference, the province called on local and foreign companies to investin 37 worker and social housing projects with a total area of over 175ha,mainly in Bien Hoa city and Nhon Trach, Long Thanh, Trang Bom, and Vinh Cuu disctrictsto partly meet the need for low-cost housing, especially from workers, he said.

Speaking at the conference, Secretary of the provincial Party Committee Nguyen HongLinh said “Many commercial housing projects have been built, but there are notmany people living in there, while workers live in substandard boarding houses.Demand for housing is still huge in the low-income segment. The economic valueof this segment is not as high as that of the commercial housing segment, butinvestors still make a profit besides the great social value they bring.”

More than 700,000 workers live in boarding houses now, he said.

The province invites businesses who have the resources and experience to investin housing projects with good quality and reasonable prices so that low-incomepeople could afford to pay for them in instalments over 15-20 years, he said.

He called on the People's Committee to earmark enough lands for social housingfor workers with a long-term vision.

To implement the Party Committee’s policy on developing worker and socialhousing, it is necessary to reach a consensus and join hands with businessesand investors, he said.

He reminded commercial housing developers to earmark a portion of the lands forsocial housing development in accordance with regulations.

Social housing projects must satisfy technical and social criteria, the housesshould not be too cramped and must ensure occupants’ welfare and adequatepublic space and infrastructure, he added.

Businesses and industry business groups shared their experiences and discussedthe advantages and difficulties in the construction of social housing.

They called on the province to eliminate bottlenecks in terms of policy,allocate land for social housing projects, make preparations for bidding toselect investors for these projects, and build social housing in cities'suburbs where land prices are lower.

Top officials in the departments of Construction and Planning and Investmentprovided information about preferential policies for investors such asexemption of land use fees and rents, loans from the social policy bank, andfully or partially subsidising the costs of technical infrastructure atprojects.

The conference was attended by executives from more than 200 enterprises basedin and outside the province./.