Should the ban on unlimited number of people renting a house be imposed with immediate effect? "Yes", says a research scholar, while a lawyer says the authorities should wait until they make enough affordable houses available to meet the market demand.

Wen Linfeng

Chaotic market needs regulation

The other day a flower vendor I know told me how uncomfortable and insecure she felt in the apartment that she and some other people had rented. "So why don't you rent one all by yourself?" I asked. Rather helplessly, she said: "I earn only about 1,000 yuan ($153.2) a month less than that needed to rent even the cheapest apartment."

She is only one among the millions who have to share an apartment with other people, thanks to high and still rising rents. Data show that by March the average monthly rent in Beijing had risen by 1.36 percent to as high as 48.88 yuan per square meter, while in Shanghai it had increased by 7.92 percent to 53 yuan.

Even the smallest room, with enough space for just one person, costs more than 1,000 yuan a month, or one-third of the average salary. According to an online survey, 44.8 percent of the people say renting a house alone is "beyond their reach". Hence, sharing an apartment is the only choice for many of those who struggle to survive in cities.

The problem is that the rental market, especially for those who share an apartment, is in chaos and badly in need of regulation. Housing agents or owners often divide one sitting room into several sections by partition walls, and rent them out to more people than the maximum permitted number.

Moreover, even toilets, kitchens and underground garages are divided and rented out. According to a report, a property management company had divided a 600-sq-m underground storeroom "with pipes and overhead wires" into 80 cubicles and rented them out to more than 200 people. To make matters worse, the storeroom had just one exit.

One can imagine how crowded and stuffy these cells are. Some reports say some of the cubicles are so small that "hardly anything more than a bed can fit in".

Safety is a big concern in such crowded places, because buildings whose inner structures are changed become more vulnerable. Too many residents also mean more electric wires, making such places fire-prone. And, if a fire breaks out in any of these places, it would be very difficult for firefighters and rescue workers to do much. Just one month ago, 11 people suffered from gas poisoning in such a makeshift dormitory, which was just one among the hundreds of such incidents in the country.

That's why I welcome the general regulation issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in February, which aims to stop such practices. The Shanghai municipality, too, has issued a draft to solicit public opinion. Both documents prohibit dividing sitting rooms and renting them out to tenants, and set a minimal limit for average space per person.

Going by the documents, a large number of rented houses would need rectification. But the government at present does not have enough personnel or information to do so. Therefore, the chaos in the rental market is not expected to end in a short time. Supervision institutions can only put words into action in the long run.

But the regulation and draft are still a giant step forward, because they would grant law enforcers the power to check and gradually end the chaos in the rental market. They can at least do something if dangers are detected instead of just sitting idle.

To end the chaos in the rental market, the authorities should first make the registration of all rented houses mandatory so that they know what and how to supervise.

When I was studying in Albany, US, community workers would come and check rented houses regularly to make sure they were safe and met the legal requirements. It's time China, too, paid the required attention to people living in rented apartments by making it compulsory for all their owners and managers to register.

Second, the authorities must develop low-rent housing programs to meet market demand. In particular, they should include migrant workers, who can only afford low-rent houses, into the housing support system so that the poor souls wouldn't have to choose between sleeping in the open air and renting a small cubicle.

The authorities also should supervise the market more strictly. In fact, the chaos in the rental market has been created partly because of its low entry threshold, which has attracted too many unqualified agencies. The authorities should introduce some professional qualification system to distinguish good managers from bad so that the competition is fairer and more transparent.

The chaotic rental market has to be regulated. Let's hope the new regulation would restore order and allow people to live happily even in rented houses.

The author is a research scholar with the House Industrialization Promotion Center, affiliated to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

Shen Bin

Do not increase tenants' burden

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a regulation banning group rentals three months ago, but they are still prevalent in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Beijing banned group rentals early this year, and Shanghai issued a draft regulation on house rentals in April. According to the Shanghai draft, "originally designed sitting rooms should not be divided and rented out" and "the average living space for one person should not be less than 5 square meters."

That means the practice of dividing a single room into several cubicles, for long a popular practice in Shanghai and other cities, will become illegal. In fact, in the past several years, Shanghai has tried to stop that practice more than once only to meet with failure, because the authorities did not have regulations to back their action. Earlier, law enforcers did not have the legal basis to tell people not to divide rooms. But now, the draft regulation has granted housing department officials that much-needed power.

Yet I do not think this is the proper time to prohibit such practices, because the authorities have not succeeded in controlling rising rents or housing prices. According to the latest data, the average monthly income of Shanghai residents is about 3,800 yuan ($584.4), but the rent for the cheapest apartments, for instance, an apartment smaller than 50 sq m, is 2,100 yuan a month. That means even a middle-income person has to spend more than half his monthly income just to rent a place.

For people earning still less, the only choice is to share a room with others. That's why I think the practice of dividing houses is a spontaneous and practical arrangement and the rational choice in the circumstances for tenants.

Of course, such arrangements always come with problems. This one is no exception. Living standards fall drastically if too many people are forced to live under one roof and other dangers like fire or gas leak increase greatly. Only one week ago, a partitioned apartment in Wangjing community of Beijing, which served as a dormitory for more than 20 students, caught fire and "was burnt to ashes".

Therefore, I support regulating the practice of partitioning houses. The problem is no one knows what effects such a regulation will have. But it would be useless if it just prohibits the practice of partitioning houses without controlling rising rents.

History teaches us a very important lesson. In the 1920s, rising rents forced many Shanghai residents to crowd into one apartment. Records show that as many as 10 families used to live in one apartment. The then government issued a regulation in 1931 prohibiting the renting out of one house to more than three families. But that order soon became a mere scrap of paper because the government failed to control rising house prices and rents.

The failure of the government in 1931 should prompt today's officials to take poor people's needs into consideration while making decisions. If they say it is "illegal" to live in a cubicle, then it is their duty to control rents so that the poor, too, could rent at least a small room.

In January, the Shanghai mayor promised that the municipal government would build 15 million sq m, or 220,000 indemnificatory apartments, for the needy. About 170,000 of those, he said, would be completed this year. That's a welcome move as it will offer affordable housing for the poor.

But since such apartments are only on paper now, I think it is too early to force people to move out of their cubicles. If the authorities force them to do so, they would be only pushing the market into deeper chaos and rendering people homeless. The government can prohibit partitioning of houses only after making affordable houses available, not before that.

Besides prohibitions, the Shanghai draft also says that all house rental contracts should be registered with local administrations. Surely, this will help better regulate the market but then the registration fee, or 5 percent of the rent, would be added to the cost. That would mean imposing a heavier burden on residents, instead of helping them.

In other words, the government is welcome to regulate the housing rental market, but the authorities should take residents' rights and interests into consideration before implementing the regulation. Without offering enough affordable houses for rent, the authorities should not ban people from living in cubicles, no matter how hazardous they are because the tenants have no choice.

The author is a Shanghai-based lawyer.

(China Daily 05/03/2011 page9)