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By the end of 2005, about 470 million square meters of affordable houses were built nationwide, helping 5.7 million urban households improve their housing conditions.
However the system is riddled with defects particularly as investment in affordable housing project has dwindled in recent years. In 1999, affordable houses accounted for 16.6 percent of the total investment in new houses. But the figure dropped to less than five percent in 2005.
The management of the affordable houses also needs to be improved, Wen said. Currently many high-income earners are buying affordable houses, due to the lack of a comprehensive personal credit record system and poor enforcement of income evaluation standards.
The third form of housing security is the low-rent houses designed to help the poorest urban group. Such houses are built or sourced from the market by the government and then allocated to competent applicants. Authorized applicants can also source houses for themselves and receive rent subsidies from the government.
According to the Ministry of Construction, government had spent 4.74 billion yuan (593 million dollars) on low-rent houses by the end of 2005, benefiting 329,000 households.
However, this system is not available to everyone in China. By 2005, 70 of the 291 cities at or above prefecture level still had not established the low-rent housing system. Following a recent order from the central government, these cities should establish the system by the end of 2006.