District gives residents new homes Rong Changmin, a resident of Beijing's Mentougou district, hangs photos of her newborn grandson on ...

District gives residents new homes

Rong Changmin, a resident of Beijing's Mentougou district, hangs photos of her newborn grandson on the wall inside the apartment her family is about to move into next month. Zhou Shijie / for China Daily

Rong Changmin, 53, is thrilled that she's going to move from her dilapidated home in the Mentougou district on the western outskirts of Beijing to a new two-bedroom apartment in May. 

What makes her even happier is that her new home is in the same area as her previous one.

Rong's new living room is painted pink, with a rose-colored couch, with a purple curtain as a backdrop, bathed in the gentle light of a crystal chandelier. Family photos on a decorative wall cloth tell of the family's happy life.

"I never imagined I would own such an apartment," said Rong, a retired employee of a local coal business.

The family of three moved into a 15-square-meter, run-down bungalow in the Shimenying area of Mentougou in 1981. After Rong's daughter married in 2008 and had a baby, there were five of them living there.

"There was no natural gas access at my old place, so I had to burn coal to cook in a cramped kitchen," said Rong, who has rented a temporary home. The old "kitchen", she said, was just a space the family had set off with bricks. "Now, as a wife, mother and grandma, I finally own a real kitchen to cook for my family."

Unlike Rong's family, Jiang Xi's grandparents still live in a bungalow similar to Rong's previous home.

"I was born and raised here," said the 22-year-old Jiang, a senior at China University of Political Science and Law.

"My dad's whole family, with my grandparents and his three siblings, used to be crammed in here in the 1980s," said Jiang. "Then, small parts of the family, like my parents, my uncle and his wife and child, gradually moved out to new places. Now only my uncle and grandparents stay here." Jiang lives in the dorm at her school, but she has always visited and taken care of her grandparents.

Jiang's grandmother is 74 years old and still has to burn coal to heat and cook during winter. "It is very inconvenient. Even if she just needs hot water, she has to burn coal," Jiang said.

And it is costly.

"It costs 3,000 to 4,000 yuan ($475 to $635) to burn coal for one winter," she said. "But we still have to wear cotton-padded jackets indoors."

Jiang said there is no place to shower in the bungalow. "I take my grandpa to the public bathrooms nearby," she added.

There is no toilet in Jiang's home, and the closest public one only has four toilets for ladies, but it serves the whole neighborhood.

The family is looking forward to moving into a building like Rong's family, and they were notified in late March that they should move from the old place so the renovations could begin.

Both families will benefit from a renovation project undertaken by the Mentougou government. Wang Hongzhong, head of the district, said the three-year project started in 2009 and involves about 31,000 families.

"So far, 832 families are ready to move," Wang said in a news conference on March 27.

Many residents of Mentougou district have inferior accommodations, Wang said. Most were employed by a local company and lived in company-provided bungalows, mostly built in the1950s and '60s.

The bungalows lag behind the times, many still lacking running water and electricity, and the neighborhood has become increasingly run-down.

Shi Xiuzhi, 58, a social worker who has served the neighborhood for more than 20 years, has seen the many shortcomings of the shabby homes.

"I remember a heavy rain flooded a resident's home in 2000. Even the refrigerator was under water," Shi recalled. When the flood subsided, "the room was filled with mud. We evacuated the area for a few days".

Shi said that because the path between the bungalows is so narrow, if one caught on fire, the whole community would suffer big losses.

"The path is too narrow for a firetruck," she said. "Firefighters can only run to our homes."

Authorities plan to invest 32.5 billion yuan to renovate this area and build facilities such as schools and hospitals. Residents must first leave their old homes and find temporary lodgings. After construction of the new home is finished, they can return in the same place or neighborhood.

The size of the new homes is 33 percent bigger, plus 20 square meters. Any additional area costs residents 4,500 yuan per square meter.

For example, if an old apartment was 30 sq m, the new one will be nearly 60 sq m, provided free of charge.

"I've visited 40 to 50 countries, and all of them have a problem with run-down housing, especially in the impoverished outskirts of cities and rural counties," said Lu Wei, deputy mayor of Beijing.

More than 80,000 families living in dilapidated houses in suburban Beijing will move into new affordable housing by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period.

Dong Fan, head of the Real Estate Research Center of Beijing Normal University, expressed concern about the future management and high concentration of such affordable housing projects for residents in the suburb.

In addition, the program gives residents no option to leave the district. "What if they want to live near their parents' home or a certain school for their children?" he said.

He suggested that authorities sell the land to developers for commercial units, and villagers whose houses were demolished should receive compensation from the government and buy houses wherever they want.

"They could move downtown, sharing the favorable living environment there," he said, adding that the high concentration of poor villagers in so many affordable-housing units in suburbs may isolate the whole community.

"If the transportation doesn't conveniently connect to downtown, the residents will feel isolated. The government needs to take this into account during planning."