Public housing buildings are constructed for households with financial difficulties in Harbin. [Photo/MY399.COM]

Harbin, the capital city of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, has taken measures to further upgrade its public housing rental security mechanism – a significant move to improve people’s livelihoods.

Statistics from Harbin’s bureau of housing and urban-rural development show that since the beginning of the year, 9,272 families who applied for public rental housing have moved into their new homes. Also, 54,000 people from 33,345 households have obtained a total of 47.60 million yuan ($7.14 million) in housing rental subsidies.

Residents have benefited from such innovative policies as distributing uniform housing decoration subsidies and the online application process for house rental subsidies.

Some public rental houses are poorly decorated due to beautification service providers who cut corners and use poor-quality materials. To address this, Harbin has launched a new public rental housing decoration management model in which "the government sets unified standards and grants decoration subsidies."
 
Meanwhile, Harbin’s housing and urban-rural development bureau has recently launched an online rental subsidies application services.

It allows applicants to submit application materials through the WeChat public account of Harbin Housing Security Center, and qualified applicants will obtain online feedback and receive subsidies each month.