Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction explains proposal for minimum room size of 5m2/person

Ho Chi Minh City promotes the safety of people's lives

At the economic and social press conference on the afternoon of August 8, Ms. Le Thi Loan, Deputy Head of the Personnel Organization Department (HCMC Department of Construction) explained the proposal that boarding houses in the city must ensure a minimum floor area of 5m2/person.

According to Ms. Loan, the outline of the Project on Management and Support for Individual Housing for Rental Purposes in Ho Chi Minh City is being submitted by the Department of Construction to the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee for consideration.

In particular, the regulation that rental houses must ensure a minimum floor area of 5m2/person is of interest to many people.

The Department of Construction has established a working group to implement the above project. The purpose of the working group when developing the project is based on the safety of people's lives above all else, from which to propose policies.

Ms. Loan said: "Privately owned houses for rent are the main source of supply to meet the housing needs of low-income people, in the context of the huge demand for rental accommodation to live, study and work in Ho Chi Minh City in recent times."

This type has solved a large number of necessary and legitimate housing needs of the people, while State resources focused on investing in and building low-income housing and social housing for rent are currently unable to meet...

According to statistics from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, there are currently about 60,500 private boarding houses operating in the area, with a total of 560,220 rooms, and about more than 1.4 million tenants.

Almost all of them were built by people without permission (for independent rental rooms) or arbitrarily converted from individual housing to rental housing (self-dividing each room, increasing the number of people living and staying many times but not yet reviewed, approved, accepted and put into use by the specialized management agency on fire prevention and fighting safety).

"Based on reality, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction believes that the development and implementation of the Project on Management and Support for Individual Housing for Rental Purposes in Ho Chi Minh City is necessary," said Ms. Loan.

Ho Chi Minh City will select 3 areas with the most boarding houses for pilot implementation.

According to Ms. Loan, the project outline has two main contents that the press and people are very interested in, which are the minimum floor area and fire safety issues.

"The regulation on minimum floor area is to limit the number of people in a room, limit the number of rooms in a house to avoid crowds and aim for the highest goal of people's safety," Ms. Loan emphasized.

Regarding the requirement that individual houses for rental purposes must have a minimum entrance width of 3-4m, the Department of Construction explained that the purpose is to ensure fire trucks can access.

In case the alley is not wide enough for the fire truck to access, the house must be no more than 100m from the main road, so that the fire truck's fire hose can reach the scene of the incident. Every room in the house must have a corridor leading to an escape route.

It is expected that after the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee approves the policy and approves the Project Outline, the Departments and branches will implement and complete the products, management solutions and support for individual houses for rental purposes and submit them to the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee no later than December this year.

In particular, the Department of Construction will coordinate with districts, towns, and Thu Duc City to survey and collect data on all boarding houses in Ho Chi Minh City.

On that basis, the Department of Construction will coordinate with the Ho Chi Minh City Police to propose criteria for minimum floor area m2/person to limit the number of people/room; limit the number of rooms in each boarding house.

Ho Chi Minh City will pilot three areas with the most boarding houses in the area to deploy and classify safe boarding house criteria and implement State management measures.

From there, the agencies will advise the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee to approve the Project. In which, there will be a database of all boarding houses in the area and regulations on minimum area and fire safety for individual houses for the purpose of renting.