Vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Hà Nội Nguyễn Thế Hùng, has ordered districts to quickly eliminate the city’s small and super-narrow houses—which have an area of less than 15 sq metres—by evicting residents, compensating them to move elsewhere and destroying the homes.— Photo vov.vn

HÀ NỘI — Vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Hà Nội Nguyễn Thế Hùng, has ordered districts to quickly eliminate the city’s small and super-narrow houses—which have an area of less than 15 sq metres—by evicting residents, compensating them to move elsewhere and destroying the homes.

After demolition, the areas will be used for public works, Hùng said.

The head of the People’s Committee of each district will be held responsible if any small and super-narrow houses are found in their area of the city in the coming time, he said.

The move came after many experts attended recent city meetings and advocated against the super-narrow houses, the Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper reported.

The experts said super-narrow houses are still found throughout the capital, although the city People’s Committee issued the directive No 20/CT-UBND in late 2016 in an attempt to fix the situation.

Data from the directive showed that up to 214 small and super-narrow houses were discovered in the city in 2016, mainly in Ba Đình, Đống Đa and Thanh Xuân.

Figure from Hà Nội’s Construction Department showed there are still 188 small and super-narrow houses in the city.

Cause and solution

According to the department, most of the small and super-narrow houses are now found in crowded and new streets. On such streets, houses’ façades are valuable as places where people can do business in a highly trafficked area. The houses are especially common on streets such as Võ Chí Công, Đặng Tiến Đông, Hào Nam, Kim Liên – Xã Đàn, Ô Chợ Dừa, Hoàng Cầu and Thanh Nhàn.

The department said the supper-skinny houses were built on new streets of 10 districts of Đống Đa, Ba Đình, Cầu Giấy, Bắc Từ Liêm, Hà Đông, Tây Hồ, Hai Bà Trưng, Thanh Xuân, Hoàng Mai and Long Biên.

The department said it is working with relevant agencies to fix the problem.

Nguyễn Việt Dũng, the department’s chief inspector said the agency already submitted to the capital People’s Committee a plan to efficiently handle the small and super-narrow houses. The committee said it would send feedback soon.

Dũng also required all districts to carefully supervise all ongoing construction sites to avoid the construction of any new small and super-narrow houses in the city. — VNS