Economy

Many caught lying in claims for affordable housing

By Wang Wen (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-16 13:35

As many as 1,371 families in Beijing had false or questionable information on their applications for affordable housing and their applications will be canceled, a government official said on Thursday.

"We cooperated with other government departments, including the police, taxation authorities and social insurance management officials to check the families' application materials starting in May," said Zou Jinsong, deputy director of the Beijing affordable housing office.

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Zou said most of the families in question did not mention property they owned so that they would qualify for affordable housing. They will not be able to apply for affordable housing for five years, he said.

"There are about 100 such families who have already moved into affordable housing, which they now must now leave," Zou said.

Affordable housing includes several specific categories, including low-rent housing, public-rent housing and price-controlled housing. Application standards vary depending on the type of affordable housing applied for and the size of the family. But in most cases a two-person family applying for affordable housing must have no more than 270,000 yuan in total assets and a combined annual income of no more than 36,300 yuan.

Zou said the affordable housing office will continue to verify the information on applicants' forms in the future.

The Beijing Evening News reported that affordable housing application forms in Xicheng district alone contained 6,473 false or misleading answers, including 494 incidents of lying about owning property and 1,757 incidents of lying about owning vehicles.

As of this June, a total of about 190,000 Beijing families, including 146,000 in 2009 alone, had applied and been approved for affordable housing, but were still waiting to move into it.

The government will build 134,000 affordable homes in 2010 to resolve the situation, said Wang Chengguo, deputy-director of the Beijing municipal commission of housing and urban-rural development.