HCM City (VNA) - More than 40,000 apartments will be needed over the next five years to resettle residents who have had to move for public works or real estate projects, according 🎶to the city's Departme🥀nt of Construction.

Speaking at a meeting held last week, Tran Trong Tuan, director of the department, said the estimated demand was based on the city's development plan to 2025. A programme that will relocate households now living along rivers and canals will need about 20,000 apartments. From now to 2020, the city will implement 462 major transport and public works and demolish dilapidated apartment buildings. The city will also need 28,168 resettlement apartments to relocate households affected by the projects and demolished buildings. Over the past 20 years, the city has relocated about 36,000 households in order to implement urban improvement projects, including sanitation environmental projects of Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe canal and Tan Hoa – Lo Gom and Tau Hu – Ben Nghe canals. Money from the city's resettlement housing fund was used to build about 41,700 resettlement apartments and housing foundations.

Old apartment buildings

The city has 178 dilapidated apartment buildings, including 67 that are in serious disrepair, according to the department. Thirty-two of the latter will be torn down.

Do Phi Hung, deputy director of the department, said the city was inspecting 30 other badly deteriorating buildings.

District People's Committees are now inspecting all old apartment buildings to assess whether they should be saved and upgraded.

This year the city relocated 1,400 households in four dilapidated apartment buildings and upgraded several old apartment buildings, according to the department.

House owners to benefit

The city People's Committee has proposed that land-use certificates should be granted to people who bought houses without signing valid contracts between July 2004 and January 2008.

About 40,000 house owners in the city will benefit if the proposal, sent to the government and the environment and natural resources ministry, is approved.

In order to get the certificates, the house owners must fulfill their financial obligations to the Government such as paying taxes and ensuring that the land/ house is not under dispute and facing any complaints.

The move was expected to ensure the rights of the house owners, the city authorities said.

More than 92 percent of the 1.52 million house owners in the city have been granted land-use right certificates and house ownership certificates as of last year.

More than 116,600 land and house owners have not received their certificates, with 23,000 of them not wanting the documents and the rest having failed to meet the requirements.

Among those house owners who are n🌳ot qualified to receive the certificates, 40 percent bought houses after July 2004 without signing authorised contracts, 23 percent had built houses against the city's housing plan and 0.4 percent had violated land and construction laws.-VNA