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Recently, “housing pension” has become a hot topic.

On August 23, Dong Jianguo, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said at a press conference that the government will study and establish a system of housing physical examination, housing pension, and housing insurance to build a long-term mechanism for housing safety management throughout the life cycle. Currently, 22 cities including Shanghai are piloting this.

Among the three systems mentioned above, the "housing pension" has attracted the most attention. Who will pay for this money and where the government's public account funds come from have aroused heated discussions.

Some people think that paying housing pension is a double charge, while others interpret it as a disguised form of real estate tax. The rumor that "Shanghai Pudong has disclosed the charging standards for housing pension" also spread on the Internet, and then the Shanghai Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission and the Municipal Housing Administration Bureau came out to refute the rumor.

Sanlihe found that the concept of housing pension originated from the collapse of a self-built house owned by a resident in Changsha, Hunan in April 2022. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development held a video conference and demanded to accelerate the research and improvement of various systems for housing construction safety management, including the study of establishing a housing pension system to better solve the problem of funds for the maintenance of existing houses.

It can be seen that the starting point of housing pension is housing safety. The name "pension" is based on the reality that my country's stock of houses is large and the proportion of old houses is increasing.

The China Population Census Yearbook 2020 shows that as of the end of 2020, old residential buildings (built before 2000) accounted for 31% (by number of units), and this proportion is expected to continue to rise in the future. A large number of old residential areas are facing maintenance and renewal issues, and it is urgent to make up for the shortcomings in the field of housing safety management, which also forces the reform of the housing pension system.

Once the system is established, the first problem it faces is where the money will come from.

Dong Jianguo said that personal accounts for housing pensions already exist through the payment of special housing maintenance funds, and the focus of the pilot is for the government to establish a public account.

Sanlihe noticed that in response to public concerns about issues such as "requiring individuals to pay money", the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development's official website has published several policy interpretation articles in succession.

Yan Jianjun, deputy director of the Insurance and Economic Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and executive researcher of the Innovation Project of the Institute of Finance of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote an article pointing out that the key measure for the reform of the housing pension system is to establish a public account. The primary purpose of the public account is to provide funds for public housing examinations. Pilot cities have adopted fiscal investment to raise funds for public accounts.

The relevant department heads of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development explained the source of funds for housing pensions: individual accounts are special housing maintenance funds deposited by owners, and the deposit is carried out in accordance with current regulations. The public account is established by the government in accordance with the principles of "taking from the house and using it for the house" and "not increasing personal burdens and not reducing personal rights and interests".

"From the pilot cities, local governments can raise funds through fiscal subsidies and land transfer fees, with the aim of establishing a stable channel for housing safety management funds, without requiring residents to pay extra fees and without increasing personal burdens."

Regarding the saying that "housing pension is an enhanced version of real estate tax", Zhang Bo, director of 58 Anjuke Research Institute, said to Sanlihe that the two are completely different. Real estate tax is essentially a tax, and tax is an important tool for regulating income distribution. It cannot be used only to solve the housing pension problem; the obvious feature of housing pension is that it is a special fund for a special purpose, that is, it can only be used for the repair of the house itself.

This means that in addition to fund raising, the use of funds is also an important task that needs to be further clarified. Zhang Bo believes that the supervision requirements for housing pension funds are high, and there are strict requirements for income and expenditure. It is expected that more detailed regulations will be issued in the future to further regulate them.