My hometown Hangzhou located in the southeast of China. It is the capital of Zhejiang province, which is the center of Zhejiang’s politics, economic and cultural. In addition, Hangzhou has been confirmed as the host of the 2022 Asian Games. As one of the most beautiful and develop city in China, Hangzhou attract the increasing number of people move to Hangzhou to live.
Discover Hangzhou, Ancient Capital of China (Video from YouTube)
Over population brought a lot of problem to Hangzhou, and the most important one is the housing problem. On the one hand, a plenty of people face the problem that they have no money to buy or rent a flat.
Hangzhou is in the southeast of China, which is the area has high population. (Picture from Baidu News)
The first reason is that, with the development of China, people in Hangzhou have better income, and they want to enjoy more of their life. The land agents are all realized this point, so they tried to build more houses than flats in Hangzhou. Of course, houses are much more expensive than flats; only a part of Hangzhou people can afford them. So in Hangzhou, there are no enough flats for those middle class people, but too much houses for high-income people.
Hangzhou has too much houses but not enough flats. (Photo from Baidu News)
Second, because the land agents spent too much money for fashion, beautiful surroundings facilities, they sell the flats or houses with too high prices that most of people cannot afford them. There is no doubt that people have increasing income, but the price of flats or houses increasing faster than people’s income. For example, in Hangzhou, a 150 square meters’ flats sell as RMB 4 million, which equal almost 640 thousand dollars. As a result, driving housing prices in Hangzhou is, however, still scaring off a significant number of people.
The prices of apartments increase so fast. (Picture from Baidu News)
Third, in recent years, speculating on real estate became more and more popular in big city, such as Hangzhou. Some rich people try to buy some flats or houses as investment. The prices of flats or houses in Hangzhou is increasing, and some people who have money want to earn more money by buying and selling flats and houses. The result is that some rich people have too much houses and flats, but the middle class or lower class people have no enough money to buy them.
Chinese rich people use apartments for earning money. (Picture from Baidu News)
On the other hand, people’s living quality is lower year by year. Because there is too many people are trying to stay in Hangzhou, the land agents built too many houses and flats for them. And then, the city became crowded. There is no enough space for that many people in Hangzhou. People spend more time in traffic jam during the time they on and off duty. In addition, we don’t have enough school recourses for so many kids, so that there are almost 50 kids in one class. To some extent, people’s living quality is lower so quick because of housing problem.
In my personal opinion, there are several ways to solve this problem.
First of all, decreasing the population in Hangzhou is one of the most important ways to solve this problem. The land agents can expend the cities, and build more apartments in the outskirts of a city. Nowadays, most of people in Hangzhou have their own cars; also, the better environment and air quality will attract young people to live there. What’ more, the housing price will be lower than the big cities.
Second, the government should control the price of the house. If the house is too expensive, many people may not be able to afford a house on their own. The government should build some special apartment for the lower class or the young people. Only those people, who have some achievements, have qualified for those apartments with cheaper prices; so that people would work harder for their apartments.
Last but not least, we should have more skyscrapers in Hangzhou. The land in Hangzhou is limited; the skyscrapers can bring more space to support people to have a good living condition, which is much better than low buildings.
Skyscrapers in Shanghai. (Photo from Baidu News)
As a high GDP city, the government in Hangzhou is already started dealing with this problem. The Government in Hangzhou also set up some new policies for keeping the flats for those middle class people, and limiting speculating on real estate. For example, the government gives those hard working people the public accumulation fund for housing construction to help them to buy their own apartments. In addition, for those people who have higher income, the government doesn’t allow them to secure a loan to purchase the second apartment; they have to pay the total bill for the second one.
A good living condition is the key to the stability city. If there are enough houses and less people in Hangzhou, the pressure of housing problem can be relieved to some degree. And then, people can have better quality in living in Hangzhou.
10. local issue
♥ Shuting Jiang ♥ 