The city hopes to perfect the scheme and set up a housing guarantee framework by the end of this year.

“This is vital for the city in order to maintain sound development and social stability,” said Li Siming, director of the Shanghai Cheap Rent House Management Office.

Gao Xiaohua is a middle-aged woman and a laid-off worker. She has a blind husband who was also laid-off and a nine-year daughter. She could not hold back the tears when neighbors helped the three of them move into a new 49-square-metre apartment.

The Gaos previously lived in a 14.7-square-metre “snail shell.” Now, in the new apartment, they only pay a low rent, just 5 percent of their meager income.

The Gaos are a typical example of a PPF, a family whose monthly income is less than 280 yuan (US$33.73) per person and whose living area is less than 5 square meters per head.

They are just one of the 115 families benefiting from the scheme in Changning District, one of the two pilot districts of the scheme which was launched in April last year.

According to Li, it is estimated that Shanghai has 7,100 PPFs. By the end of the first quarter this year, more than 300 of these families will either be given a larger apartment by paying a certain low rent, or will get the rent money from the government and search for a new apartment themselves.

Between 1987 and the end of 1999, the city helped 120,000 PPFs solve their housing problems. The criterion to be described as a PPF family has also changed, from 2 to 2.5 to 4 to the present 5 square meters per head.

The standard for widowed people who are senile, martyr’s relatives (the relatives of dead army men) or the disabled is 7 square meters per head.

“This is a long and hard campaign,” Li said. “The government should do more to address the housing problems and PPFs should also try to improve their living situation themselves.”

(China Daily 02/12/2001)