Shanghai (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Landlords must guarantee tenants at least 5 m2. After years of campaigning, last week The Shanghai Housing and Land Resources Administrative Bureau has issued a notice stating the minimum space that had to be allotted per person in an apartment should be no smaller than five square meters and reiterated that tenants could not make major renovations to an apartment without permission. Also last week authorities swooped on the Brilliant City housing complex in the city's northwest: 965 apartments which had been rented or renovated to serve a floating population of nearly 10,000 people. The first batch of 55 apartments included in the crackdown were divided into 340 smaller rooms and accommodated 553 people over 6,000 square meters.
“Among the 55 apartments, 11 were even used to run companies or sell packed lunches," said Lu Huan, an official of the Putuo District government. Now all the owners have torn down the home-made walls and restored them to the way they were.
In Brilliant City there are only shared sanitary facilities, or in some cases none at all because they have been transformed into rooms for rent. A bed costs 300 Yuan a month and is usually occupied by workers and migrant students in a attempt to cut down on living costs, but tenants also include criminals and prostitutes. Two months ago a fire in Songjiang district killed six people living together in 50 m2.
Shanghai's average per capita living space is 16 square metres. Now, particularly in the run up to the Olympics the government has declared war on the squats. But those who live in them say they need “a place to sleep, even if uncomfortable” and that they can’t afford to pay higher rent. In the wealthy districts rents reach 21.70 dollars (circa 163 Yuan) per metre squared. The city gives rent subsidies to residents counting for over 25 thousand families, but not the millions of migrants who live here.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post Wang Haifeng of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences said the government should broaden the scheme - which offers housing at low rents - to include migrant workers. "We have also recommended policymakers regulate the private house-rental business rather than restrict it"”. Otherwise once the clamp down on brilliant city has ended – as one landlord admits – apartments of 80 m2 subdivided into 7 rooms rented out to 20 people, will return.
