The State Council has emphasized the importance of a housing security system to ensure affordable houses for the country's urban poor.

At a national conference on urban housing held at the weekend, the cabinet highlighted the importance of a low-rent housing system. It issued the plan, known as No 24 file, on August 13.

It was the first high-profile housing conference since 1998, when the country embarked on a market-oriented urban housing reform, insiders said.

The plan to make houses available at low rents or provide equivalent subsidies is scheduled to cover all the minimum living standards in large- and medium-sized cities by the end of this year. And it is scheduled to cover all low-income families across the country by 2010.

A "double limit" requirement mooted in June was highlighted at the conference to limit the price and size of affordable houses. According to the requirement, at least 70 percent of apartments in new complexes have to be less than 90 sq m each.

Attended by the Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan, the conference highlighted the imperativeness of urban low-rent and affordable housing, and commercial housing not exceeding a price ceiling.

"Different from the two housing guidelines issued in 2005 and 2006 to cool down the commercial housing market, the No 24 file stresses a social guarantee toward the urban poor," Ni Pengfei, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher was quoted by Southern Metropolis as saying. To better facilitate the implementation of the plan, the civil affairs, land use, fiscal and taxation and other related departments are expected to submit nine supportive plans to the State Council before October.

These include verification of low-income families, management of low-rent and economy housing, bottom-line housing descriptions for migrant workers, national budget subsidies and preferential financial policies. Some officials have also been shifted or reshuffled to facilitate the implementation of the plan.

Jiang Zengwei, former deputy-director of the State Commission of Development and Reform, has been renamed deputy-director of the Ministry of Construction. In charge of the nation's fixed asset management, he led an inspection team to Shenzhen in March to study the most expensive property market in the country.

(China Daily August 28, 2007)