Unbalance Distribution of Rental Housing is Severe

Public lease housing for the homeless is not built in the districts that actually require the housing. On the contrary, in some area, lease housing is on excessive supply. So it shows unsystematic housing supply policy.

On the 23rd, according to the materials submitted to Parliament House by Ministry of Construction & Transportation (MCT), in the first half of this year, 15,731 units of lease housing has been constructed.

Among them, 6,477 housing is supplied to the districts where housing supply rate is over 110% ▽Chunnam (124.5%) 1,495 units ▽Kangwon (119.9%) 1,154 units▽ Chunbuk (117.1%) 2,120 units ▽Chungbuk (114.6) 853 units ▽ Kyungbuk (11.7%) 565 units▽ Chungnam (124.3%) 290 units etc.

In theses districts, constructors failed pay bills because of excessive supply of housing, and from 12,800 units to 52,000 units of apartment according to districts are under uncompleted.

On the other hand, in the districts where are below average housing supply rate (98.3) even a housing unit was built such as Seoul & Pusan (89.2%), Daegu (85.6%), Ulsan (92.8%) etc.

Lee Chun-hee, senior officer for Housing Policy of DCT spoke “ the unbalanced distribution of housing happened as private construction companies drove public lease housing” and added “ in the future, 60% of lease housing driven by government will be constructed in Seoul metropolitan area and the rest will be constructed in major cities and industrial areas”

According to National Administration Supervision materials, many of green belt area dissolved for lease housing has been used for other purposes or replaced with other areas.

In the early of this year, the government designated 11 green belt areas to dissolve for lease housing, however, only 8 areas are under process for the construction.

Two of the rest 3 areas, can be designated as residential area, but for the one area, the plan should be replaced with contracted size.

Additionally, as environmental organizations force to stop high storey building, so the actual supply will be bellowed than planned (60,000 units).

According to a officer of a corporation funded by government commented “the problem happens because government focuses on quantity and plans housing construction based on aggregate supply, and doesn’t manage properly” and indicated “housing policy should be reviewed fundamentally”

Jae-Seong Hwang jsonhng@donga.com