Lawmakers Mak and Zheng concerned about tenants, seniors in urban renewal plans

Lawmakers Mak Soi Kun and Zheng Anting have expressed concerns to the government regarding the fate of the tenants currently living in buildings targeted for planned urban renewal.
During the period before the agenda of yesterday’s Legislative Assembly (AL) plenary session, Mak was the first to raise the matter. He questioned the government about the fate of people currently renting apartments in buildings that the government has signaled will be demolished and rebuilt under plans for urban renewal.
“After the demolition of an old building for urban renovation, where are the tenants who have been renting the cheap houses going?” Mak asked.
The same lawmaker cited the conclusions of a study released by Macau Urban Renewal Limited on a group of seven buildings located at Iao Hon neighborhood that the government aims to be the first targeted with this plan in estimating the impact. Mak stated there are “around 12,014 people living in these buildings, from which around 30% are the apartment owners, and 45% are occupied by tenants,” adding that at least 30% of these units are occupied by non-resident workers who use them as dormitories.
Citing the same study, Mak also said that the average occupancy of these units is 5.3 people per apartment, a figure much higher than the general average of three people per unit in Macau.
The lawmaker noted that these people are part of the lower income population and so will suffer dramatically due to the renewal projects.
“Around 3,000 house owners who live in these buildings will move to temporary housing, but there are at least 5,000 tenants who are renting houses in these buildings where the rent is cheap. Because of their limited economic capacity and with the current global unstable economic situation, if tenants are forced to move to another house with a higher rent, won’t this affect their lives?” he continued, urging the government to prepare in advance for such problems to avoid future chaos resulting from the lack of housing for those in need during the urban renewal process.
In a separate inquiry to the government, lawmaker Zheng also touched on the same topic, adding that senior citizens who own or rent apartments in the same area will suffer even more, as all of them must live in low-rise walkup buildings because of their inability to afford rental units in high-rise buildings equipped with elevators.
Zheng noted that over 4,000 elderly citizens live in their own homes in these five-story buildings, while the first phase of the new elderly residences presented recently by the government only offers around 1,800 units.
The lawmaker also noted that, as time goes by, the problem of the aging population only gets bigger. He believes therefore that the 1,800 units presented by the government will “hardly meet the growing demand,” urging the government to plan accordingly with real demand and move forward with the second and third phases of this project.
Additionally, there is an even larger group of elderly citizens that are renting units in the same types of buildings and who do not have the economic capacity to handle a rent hike but at the same time will be excluded from applying to rent economic public housing, due to the assets they have accumulated over their lifetime.