HOUSING POLICIES FOR THE URBAN LOW-INCOME IN VIETNAM

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to examine the housing policies for the low-income in Vietnam. Being a developing country with rapid urbanization, housing has become an important aspect since it provides the basic needs and settlement for the population. With the changing economic environment, there exists a larger gap between the rich and the poor living in the cities of Vietnam. Housing developers, as such, focus their attention into the pool of affluent customers while ignoring a larger collection of population who cannot afford high price housing. The Vietnam Government has seen this problem and been implementing various policies to help the low-income in the urban cities, though effective results have not yet been observed. Some policies are also being drafted, most importantly, Proposal 84/TTr-BXD (Proposal 84 of Ministry of Construction) and 104/TTr-BXD (Proposal 104 of Ministry of Construction), to fill the gap of housing needs. These current policies are the very first ones to enact the Government’s role as a developer, constructing a social housing formula in the cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City by the state budget so as to apply country-wide. With an analysis from the economic as well as social perspective, this study shows that housing policies in Vietnam in general have considered the right beneficiaries and will have a good impact on the economy, though there are persisting problems of ambiguity and lengthy procedures, non-influential incentives for private developers and high pricing as well as the question of country-wide implementation of such social housing development formula.