Housing campaign raises provincial quality of life

Owning a safe and comfortable residence is the dream of many rural residents in Shanxi province, and that dream is becoming a reality thanks to a provincewide rural housing development and renovation campaign which has been implemented in recent years.

Dragging his impaired leg, Cheng Jianchang, a resident in the village of Xinxian in Wenshui county, visits a new construction site in the village at least once a day, becoming increasingly excited when seeing that the houses are nearing completion.

Cheng has lived in a rundown mud house for decades. As he is a member of a low-income family, he said he couldn't afford to build a new house on his own, although he wanted to live in a new one.

And then an affordable housing project was launched in the village. With investment from both the government and himself, he became eligible to own a new house at a very low price.

Zhang Shanbao, a resident in Xindian village in the same county, is similarly as excited as Cheng.

He is the only one supporting his family, which includes his wife who is mentally impaired, a son with a physical disability, and two daughters in school. Because of their low income, the family had to live in a mud adobe house with a floor space of merely 20 square meters.

"Thanks to the housing renovation project launched by the county government, our house was upgraded to a spacious, brick and wood-structured new residence in 2020," Zhang said. "We paid only a very small proportion of the construction costs."

The county government of Wenshui began to implement a rural housing improvement program in 2009. Since then, it has allocated a total of 164.24 million yuan ($24.46 million) for the program, building or renovating houses, or subsidizing residents when they build houses with their own resources.

According to local officials, the program focuses on improving housing for families with financial and other difficulties. Renovating unsafe houses is another priority.

Over the past 13 years, the program in Wenshui has benefited more than 40,000 rural residents in more than 13,000 households.

In Shanxi as a whole, the province has seen the construction and renovation of residences for about 672,000 rural families during the period from 2013-21, involving a total investment of nearly 8.7 billion yuan from governments at various levels. A total of 2 million rural residents have benefited from the program, according to the Shanxi Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

Han Linfang contributed to this story.

The village of Songshuping in Zuoquan county shows a splash of color after a renovation project. SUN RUISHENG/CHINA DAILY