How Can Low-income Housing Avoid Becoming Slum? The Governance Approach in China
Download Document| Date Published | 2014 |
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| Primary Author | Feng Deng |
| Other Authors | |
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| Country | China |
Abstract
For both policy makers and academic researchers it is an important concern whether or not low-income housing will become slum. The central issue of slum in both developing countries and developed countries is the lack of some local public goods such as security and sanitation. Hence, we propose a governance approach that focuses on how to better provide local public goods. By studying two empirical cases of low-income communities in Chongqing, China, we found that the critical problem in their local governance is that they couldn’t afford property management company (PMC). We argue that the combination of homeowners association (HOA) and financial subsidy to property management fee can introduce competition among PMCs into their local governance, resulting in better provision of local public goods and, ultimately, helping them to stay away from slum.