Tianjin housing scheme helps 500,000 families
A four-year home-improvement programme has upgraded the housing conditions of 500,000 families in Tianjin.
Introduced in 1994, the programme had resulted in demolition of 4.3 million square metres of old, single-storey houses and construction of more than 10 million sq m of apartment buildings, Xinhua reported.
This had helped raise the per capita living space of residents from six to 12 sq m. The programme also helped propel the housing market, which had been in a long slump.
During the past four years, housing sales in the city amounted to 12.34 billion yuan (about HK$11.48 billion). The programme also had drawn millions of US dollars in investments from Hong Kong developers, the agency said.
Before 1994, Tianjin, with a population of more than nine million, had seven million sq m of dilapidated one-storey houses built before 1949 without kitchens and toilets.
