Raimundo do Rosário
The Urban Renewal Committee has reached a consensus over the regulation of the ratio for the number of owners required to agree in order to move forward with a building renovation by creating a gradated criteria according to the building’s age.
“The third specialized commission presented a proposal that was debated and we reached a consensus, at least partially… That all buildings with 30 years or less to be renewed or demolished need the agreement of 100 percent of the owners. As for the buildings in between 30 and 40 [years old, they need the agreement of] 90 percent of the owners and for the ones with over 40 years old it requires 85 percent of the owners to agree [with the decision to renovate or demolish it],” the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, said yesterday at the end of the committee’s meeting.
Currently the law states that a building’s major renovation or demolishment requires full agreement of all building owners. This was reportedly one of the biggest obstacles for the renovation and transformation of industrial buildings into buildings designed for other purposes.
Rosário also mentioned that although such a proposal still needs to go to the plenary meeting to be approved after “small adjustments,” the consensus was made clear during yesterday’s meeting.
As for the other topics in discussion with the different commissions, the Secretary told the media that they “are all still being debated,” but no conclusions have been reached yet.”
Nevertheless, Paulo Tse, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Companhia de Electricidade de Macau (CEM), who is coordinating the first special commission, told the media on the sidelines of the meeting that providing “temporary housing” to the residents of the housing units during the renewal or rebuilding period, was not a possibility. “The resort to some housing units of the public housing building is totally out of question”.
“There was a proposal to reclassify some of the units from public housing building as temporary housing [to serve such a purpose]. However, this idea was not well received by some of the members and also not well received by the Housing Bureau (IH) which is the [body that is] overall responsible for social housing,” Tse said. He remarkied that the main reason for this non-agreement has to do with the fact that they did not want to “lengthen the waiting period of the Macau residents that have been waiting for social and economic housing.”
Tse also added, “we have to wait for the government to designate plots of land for this specific purpose,” adding, “in the mean time there will be other measures [that will pass through] subsidized for the residents who will be leaving their present accommodation.”
This is a decision that Tse mentioned has been “agreed in principle by the Urban Renewal Committee and that will be submitted to the government to further considerations.”
Questioned on the difficulties for the committee to reach agreements, Tse said, “there have been some robust discussions from all quarters because all the members are taking a very serious approach to urban renewal.” Tse concluded by saying that this topic is never an easy one anywhere in the world because it affects the livelihood of people directly.
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