They live in an unfinished building
In the unfinished building, a family of three is simply furnished.
The unfinished building is a different world. The building has only a gray concrete frame without doors and windows. Low walls, wooden boards, and iron wires separate this area from the surrounding prosperity. Wild dogs will haunt here, and wild cats will also hide in a corner. They bark like babies crying.
In May of this year, when Chen Yanchun lived here, she was besieged by seven or eight wild dogs at night; there was also a laser light of unknown source shining into the house late at night, scaring her to hide under the bed. Usually, she didn't dare to fall asleep until dawn.
This should be her home. In 2013, she bought a house in this community called "Different Happiness City". The community belongs to the shantytown renovation project initiated in 2011 in Guandu District, Kunming. The house she bought is located in Lot 4, including 12 buildings and 1243 residences.
At the beginning of 2015, the site was suspended. The developer once sent a letter to the owner, “Starting in the second half of 2014, the real estate market has been in a downward trend. Our company has encountered market risks and difficulties in capital turnover.”
In recent years, the relevant departments of Kunming City have responded to the unfinished problem of the "Different Happy City" on the city government website and other online political channels, saying that they will take various measures to guide the developers to complete the finalization of the project. . But in the past 5 years, the building has never actually resumed work.
From May this year, some impatient owners began to live in this unfinished "Happy City". Most of them are relatively difficult conditions among buyers. Some families have moved all their belongings into unfinished buildings, while others are still wandering between the piles of gray dilapidated buildings and their temporary residences.
Chen Yanchun was the first person to live in. "I am a single mother, and my income has fallen this year. I really can't afford the mortgage and expenses." She said that living here is very hard, but she will live there forever, which may also attract the attention of relevant departments.
The owners spontaneously repair unfinished buildings.
1
Soon after Chen Yanchun moved into the unfinished building, the rainy season in Kunming arrived. The drainage system of the unfinished community has not yet been repaired. One night, the rain accumulated more and more. She lay on the bed and watched the water flood into the house. On the other side of the gate, the aqua toilet churned out yellow filth. Most of the chicks that Chen Yanchun raised in front of the door died, and the remaining few struggled to escape onto the floating wooden board.
She was living in a shed at the gate of the community. Inside the house, the rain flooded the bed. She cried and moved the stool to the bed, hiding on it, staring at the seam around the work shed, bubbling out like water boiling. The other owners who came after hearing the news brought rain boots and called her to come out quickly, saying that the house might collapse. But she said that she didn't want to leave at that time, she was not afraid, she just wondered if the 12 buildings behind her were going to die.
Later, the number of owners who intended to move in gradually increased, and people opened the front door bound by the iron lock. What catches your eyes is a large field of weeds, which was originally a parking lot for unloading during construction. Three old vehicles left by the construction party were covered by creepers. Then there is a huge dirt pit, and the concrete empty space in the residential area behind is scattered with steel bars, bricks, wooden frames and sand.
The first floor of the 12 unfinished buildings is a closed semi-basement, and the entrance is on the second floor. However, there are no steps at the entrance of all buildings, and even the simple stairs used in construction have been removed. The owners looked at each other, even if they were downstairs, they were still out of sight.
Everyone decided to unite and renovate the community. People picked up bricks and wooden frames from the open space and built up steps. On average, a few men can set up steps for a building every two days. The remaining people were weeding at the door, or pulling sand and gravel to fill in the pit that obstructed access. On a piece of wild grass on the side, Chen Yanchun set a fire. After the fire went out, it became her vegetable field.
The children play in the living room of the house in the unfinished building.
There are many deep pits excavated during the construction in the open space between the unfinished buildings to store water; except for the open window holes, many areas on the edges of the unfinished buildings do not have any walls; the elevator shafts built in advance lead directly from the underground 18 Layers, pitch black, invisible to the bottom-these places that urgently need protection were all briefly fenced with building materials.
Most of the residents who moved in were concentrated in several buildings near the gate. Because there is no elevator, people often choose a room on the lower floors to live in. Now, the first leafy vegetables planted by Chen Yanchun in the vegetable field are mature, and the green onions have sprouts.
In this community without water and electricity, people left a water storage pit that was not sealed, and they usually fetched water from it to wash their faces and feet. They have to borrow water for cooking from the residents in the surrounding communities, and by the way, they have to go to these people to store electricity for the power bank. At night, power banks and solar lights will keep them from falling into darkness completely.
When the "Different Happiness City" shut down in 2015, these owners had not thought that they would encounter this situation. "At the time, I thought, how could nobody care about such a big project?" Some owners said, "I hope, it's been a little bit worn out in the past few years."
It is understood that in addition to commercial housing, these unfinished real estates also include some government relocation houses and unit group purchases. In 2017, the Kunming Arbitration Commission ruled that the developer should pay a monthly overdue loss of 1,500 yuan to the owner of the commercial house who purchased the unfinished property. However, a few months later, the Kunming Intermediate People's Court issued an enforcement ruling, stating that the developer had not fulfilled its obligation of compensation and had no property to enforce enforcement upon inquiry.
China Enforcement Information Disclosure Network currently shows that Kunming Jiadali, the developer of the "Different Happy City", and its related Kunming Xiaoan Demolition Company are all listed as untrustworthy enforcers.
Back then, the property's main focus was on price/performance ratio, attracting buyers who were not financially affluent. When the year was good, these people accumulated a down payment of several hundred thousand yuan, and individual families also bought private cars. Under special circumstances this year, many people's income has plummeted.
An owner named Liu Ping and her husband are both engaged in the tourism industry, and both were unemployed in the first half of the year; Chen Yanchun’s restaurant just opened last year closed down; a family whose shop closed down can only rely on her husband to drive an online car to make a living; The two-year-old couple said that the husband had a lot less work on the construction site this year, but the wife's 1,700 yuan as a sanitation worker became a stable income.
Under this circumstance, the average annual rent in Kunming is more than 20,000 yuan, which is difficult for these families who have to bear the mortgage.
Two months after Chen Yanchun moved into the unfinished building, more than 30 families have moved their belongings into the community. Some of them have already moved in completely; some rents are about to expire and are stepping up their relocation; some are still entangled in renting houses, relatives and friends' homes, and unfinished buildings.
A woman who lives in an unfinished building said that although her parents also have a house in Kunming, her mother has scolded her almost every day for being disobedient and unreliable. Another family has lived in his sister’s house these years, and the other party recently said that the children in the family still have to go to school, and there are more people living in the family. The house is really a bit crowded...
In the unfinished "Different Happy City", there are ordinary laborers who came to Kunming from the countryside, saved a down payment, and determined to take root; there are families who sold their own "old and broken young" and dreamed of improving their lives; There are also businessmen who set up multiple houses in the community and plan to allocate them to themselves, their children, and rent them out for retirement.
"1000 households have 1000 stories and 1000 situations." Liu Ping said, "but there is only one ending, living in an unfinished building."
The entire building was heavily waterlogged and building materials piled up.
2
Two months after living in an unfinished building, Chen Yanchun moved from the work shed to the second floor of a certain building.
The unfinished building was still completely like a construction site, and it was gray everywhere-no matter the walls, the ground, or the floating dust. On the potted wall, the family posted several bright literacy pictorials for the children. The family of three occupies only one cabin, the child sleeps in a small bed, and the couple set up a tent.
On the window frame without a window, a man carefully glued the window screens, pressing the corners over and over again. His family has a daughter who is about to take the entrance examination.
Liu Ping's bedside table is covered with a clean tablecloth. In addition to a large bucket of purified water and a few domestic cosmetics, a large bouquet of fresh yellow lilies is the bright color in the room. She likes flowers, and Chen Yanchun does the same. The latter was reluctant to bear a lot of his own potted plants, moved from the rental house to the work shed, and now they are placed outside.
The sanitation worker with a monthly income of 1,700 yuan bought the cheapest floor glue from the market, with wooden patterns, and covered the floor of the whole house. Her husband, who works in construction, spent 50 yuan to bring back the discarded glass sliding door from the client, and fixed it on the unclosed large balcony of her house with a little cement to block the wind. The people living on the third floor even thought about digging a special sewage pipe downstairs so that they could use the toilet.
When it got dark, the lights of the surrounding tall buildings gradually turned on, surrounding the pitch-black Lot 4. Different from the lights in the surrounding buildings, there are only a little white light in the 12 buildings of the No. 4 plot, mostly from the charging lamps that the students are using. Many of them have heard their parents' instructions: study hard and don't run around.
The night is the hardest. In the corridors, you can’t see your fingers. Those unprotected balconies, elevator shafts and stairs without handrails are all dangerous to children. There are too many mosquitoes in the unfinished building, and the night wind blows in unobstructed. Not only is it gloomy and cold, but it also always lifts the floating dust on the ground, choking people's noses.
During the day, people can go to the aqua toilet at the gate that was built by construction workers to relieve themselves. But at night, everyone can only use the toilet. The man who seriously muffled the screens recalled that he brought his daughter to a "new home", and the little girl exclaimed: "How could this be? I won't live!" His wife murmured next to him, "This is also very good, we did our best. ..."
Rainy days are not easy. Chen Yanchun said that rain would come in from the windows with the wind. Her bed is covered with a quilt, and her body is covered with two quilts and one blanket. She still feels cold.
Poor drainage is still there. After a heavy rain, stagnant water remained in the open space downstairs for several days. Moss and fungus thrive everywhere, emitting an unpleasant smell, stepping on it like slimy silt. Many people fell as a result, such as aunt sanitation worker. After she fell to the ground, she couldn't get up, and several owners came to help her upstairs. From that day on, her waist could no longer bend.
Speaking of these things, Liu Ping couldn't laugh or cry. In 2013, she sold her original small house, convinced that this community with supporting schools is her home for the second half of her life.
That year, the Kunming property market was extremely hot. Chen Yanchun remembered that all properties were rising, almost one price per week. People are saying that if you don't buy a house now, you can't afford it anymore. She believed this sentence. The scene at the sales office of the "Different Happiness City" is still in my mind today: It's really crowded. The high-quality houses on the 10th and 11th floors were listed, and people rushed to rush. She was waiting in line early in the morning to pay.
Now, the stagnant projects have left loans for these owners. These home buyers who were not well-off at the time have to pay as little as one to two thousand yuan a month, and as much as nearly 10,000 yuan in mortgages.
"Can you imagine the feeling of filling the bottomless pit for nothing?" Liu Ping told reporters. Some families also suspended their loans from the bank for a while, but then all the bank cards in the names of the buyers were frozen, and they could not even receive wages.
The owner Chen Xiaoli (pseudonym) in her 30s said that she was really happy when she handed in the down payment 7 years ago. She has been renting in a nearby village in the city, and passing by these high-rise apartments at work every day, dreaming that one day there will be a light for her after get off work, "only to become the master of the city."
But now, only unfinished real estate awaits her. One evening, Chen Xiaoli stood by the window and watched the children downstairs picking up the hoes used by the adults to renovate the community, and digging in the sand, suddenly crying. "It also spent hundreds of thousands of millions of yuan. Why do people's children have gardens and fitness equipment? Our children have been playing hoes here since they were young."
An owner once led his granddaughter to this unfinished community. The little girl looked around and asked her: These houses are so dilapidated, are there bad people living in them?
She burst into tears.
Chen Yanchun recently sent her young children into full-care classes. She has too many things to take care of. On a rainy day, she took a reporter to the top floor to see the situation. She grabbed the wall casually, but the cement was like sand, easily broken in the palm of her hand. The exposed steel bars also began to change color—all traces of weathering.
She suddenly realized that maybe after a few more years, the real estate will not even have the chance to resume work. She kept in mind the feel when she scratched the cement, "That's scratching my heart, my blood and sweat!"
The proprietors paved paths on the open land with serious water accumulation.
3
Liu Ping told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that more and more families are staying in unfinished buildings. By September, with the expiration of a group of owners’ rents and some children will attend nearby schools, the number of households should increase.
On June 15, the Guanshang Sub-district Office of Guandu District, which governs the "Different Happy City", convened representatives of the owners and developers to study the fundraising and self-help issues of this unfinished building. After the meeting, an opinion letter was sent to the owners. Liu Ping wrote at the time: It is really helpless to agree to save yourself until now...
But more than a month has passed, and everyone has not heard of new progress.
A reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily consulted the Housing and Urban-rural Development Bureau of Guandu District on this matter. The other party said that the Guanshang Subdistrict Office took the lead in handling the incident. The bureau is not the first leading department and does not know the situation; Guanshang Street Office stated that it would arrange for the person in charge to call the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporters, but did not reply at the time of press; the relevant person in charge of Jiadali Real Estate said that this The company is conducting judicial proceedings with the construction party on the economic disputes arising from the unfinished plots, and it is not appropriate to speak out during the trial.
Life in the unfinished building has continued. With the gradual increase in the number of families living in, Chen Yanchun took the initiative to change the sheds at the door into a collective kitchen to cook for everyone. This saves money and only spends a few yuan per person per day.
She changed her job to a night shift, sleeping four or five hours a day, and working for two dinners for dozens of people in the remaining half day. Rice should be steamed in 2 to 3 vats per meal, 5 liters of oil is only enough for 3 days, and it takes several kilograms of white wine to marinate kimchi.
Recently, the men used discarded bricks to make a few paths in the water-filled open area of the community. Everyone also dug out and cleaned the aqua toilet with a history of seven or eight years. A retired old teacher used a brush and red paper to mark the pits of the big and small numbers.
The people in this community are falling into various entanglements and confusion. Their financial situation is stretched; they are prepared to live in unfinished buildings, but they are undoubtedly looking forward to the resumption of real estate.
She said that she is engaged in the tourism industry and is still looking forward to economic recovery, and now she is looking for a job.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Cheng Mengchao Wen and photo source: China Youth Daily