The official incompetence will offer some reassurance to frightened homeowners that the housing market time bomb won't explode anytime soon
Lin Min
THE decision by Shenzhen’s city legislature last week to allow some unlawful buildings to be legalized after paying penalties has rattled the nerves of owners of legal housing who fear it would open the floodgate of a large number of cheap homes to the market.
The estimated 330,000 illegal buildings in Shenzhen, mostly constructed by native inhabitants of the city’s former villages, have become a permanent sculpture of the boomtown’s dark side.
Besides their potent display of rampant lawbreaking, the buildings highlight the poignant divide between hardworking migrant homeowners who consider themselves “slaves” to a home that they can earn only by toiling for life and the natives who have become multimillionaires simply by building more homes than they are permitted to by law.
The infamously crowded buildings also form a blockade to fire engines and any fire could be catastrophic, posing a time bomb for the city.
The city government allows each native village household to construct a building with no more than 480 square meters of floor space. But many have flaunted the rule and built extra homes, usually paying only small amounts to the villages and ignoring payments of taxes and government land fees.
Over the past 30 years, waves of illegal construction swept across the city, with repeated failures by authorities to stop the practice emboldening more to take the risk. Village officials who built even more illegal houses than ordinary villagers and grass-roots law-enforcement officials who received bribes for turning a blind eye all contributed much to the lawlessness that is permanently characterized by the sprawling colonies of unsafe, crowded buildings.
Ten years after a previous failed attempt to clean up the mess, city lawmakers stated in a resolution issued last week that illegal buildings that pose no hazard to public safety and the environment can be legalized after the owners pay land fees and fines. This has reportedly led to a surge in the sale of illegal houses even though detailed rules have yet to be announced.
The legalization plan has also drawn cynical remarks by netizens who are angry that the wealth dishonestly amassed by “good-for-nothing” villagers and speculators will be legalized. Others are worried that legalized urban village homes, which cost a fraction of legal housing, have become a time bomb in the housing market ready to wipe out their property value.
It is estimated that the illegal “handshake” buildings, so named because they were so closely built that neighbors could shake hands through windows, occupy half of the city’s total housing spaces. Song Ding, director of the Tourism and Real Estate Research Center under the China Development Institute, urged the government to be cautious. “Even 1 percent of the illegal buildings, about 3 million square meters in floor space, will be equal to half of the homes sold last year in Shenzhen. Even if such a small portion is legalized, it would cause the housing market to tumble.”
However, the city’s previous attempts to stop illegal construction have led to a vicious cycle, with more people rushing to build new structures with each official campaign, routinely neutralized by corruption among grass-roots officials, ultimately failing to halt the desperate rush to grab the evermore precious resource of land. And with the number of illegal buildings swelling, it has become impossible to demolish them.
Will the authorities make a difference this time? The track record of grass-roots officials in policing urban villages bodes ill for the latest efforts, and the absence of real accountability by them makes it almost impossible for the vicious cycle to be broken. The bright side, however, is that their incompetence will offer some reassurance to frightened homeowners and property developers that the housing market time bomb won’t explode anytime soon.
(The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)
