Chongqing to build low-cost homes for a third of its people

The mainland's largest municipality has launched the country's most ambitious subsidised housing programme, with its mayor vowing to help a third of the city's population.

Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan said the municipality provided more than a tenth of the country's subsidised rental housing last year, even though its 28 million residents were just over 2 per cent of the mainland's population.

'Chongqing has built over 500,000 subsidised rental housing units and rented out over 300,000 units last year against the national total output of three million units in the same period,' Huang said in Beijing yesterday, ahead of today's opening of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

Huang said his government aimed to develop the property market into what he called the 'three one-thirds' - one third each of subsidised housing, budget housing and luxury housing.

He said it was the government's responsibility to provide shelter for low-income city dwellers who could not afford to buy an apartment. No timeframe was mentioned.

The mainland's skyrocketing property prices have become a major source of public dissatisfaction, prompting the central government to launch a string of measures to cool the property market, while announcing plans to build 10 million low-rental apartments this year.

However, Chongqing's programme is the most ambitious, with its mayor saying it will build 40 million square metres of subsidised rental housing in the next three years.