The voice of the public is very high, and there are a lot of "obstructions" in reality-
why is it so difficult to install elevators in old communities?
This year's government work report proposes to intensify the transformation of old communities in cities and towns.
This is also the fourth consecutive year that the renovation of old communities has been included in the government work report.
It can be seen that the government attaches great importance to this work of benefiting the people.
It is also obvious that the transformation process has not been smooth sailing.
In actual operation, the installation of elevators has become a "blocking" point.
In many communities, the installation of elevators is not smooth, and the owners' opinions are not uniform, and the financing of the installation costs are still difficult "hard bones".
According to the statistics of the installation of elevator workshop by Xu Hu of the state-owned Western Group, in Shanghai alone, the workshop received 660 consultation cases in the past two years, and the proportion of actual completion of construction and delivery is less than 3% of the total number of applications.
What is the difficulty in installing elevators in old communities?
How to crack these additional "blocking" points?
Elevator installation is heavy
How to solve the cost problem?
"We don't need to pay to install the elevator. We only pay for the ride. The price is only a few cents, which is quite a bargain!" This is the sigh of the residents in the living quarter of the Party School of the Provincial Party School of Kunming, Yunnan Province over the changes in the community.
In October last year, the 4 external “shared elevators” installed in Kunming, Yunnan Province, which were installed in a leasing mode, were inspected and put into use in the living area of the Party School of the Provincial Party Committee.
In this retrofit project, social funds will be used to install elevators in advance, and users will pay for it on a per-time, monthly or annual basis. The enterprise can recover the initial investment through the use of elevator income and car advertisements.
"Shared elevator" provides a new solution to promote the installation of elevators in old communities, but the transformation task still has a long way to go.
In July 2020, the "Guiding Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Reconstruction of Old Urban Communities" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") issued by the State Council proposed that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, in light of local conditions, we will strive to basically complete the work before the end of 2000. The completed transformation tasks of old communities in cities and towns that need to be transformed.
According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, there were nearly 170,000 old communities built before 2000 in China.
In the face of such a huge demand for elevator installation, where the funds come from has become a major problem that plagues the renovation of old communities.
At present, the cost of installing elevators varies slightly from place to place, but if you include the construction of pipeline renovation, follow-up maintenance and other costs, they are generally around several hundred thousand yuan.
Coupled with the characteristics of old communities that need to be renovated, which generally have lower floors and fewer households, it is indeed not a small amount of money to be allocated to each household.
Wang Dong, member of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and director of the No. 203 Research Institute of China Ordnance Industry, said that most of the residents in the old community are elderly people, retired employees, disadvantaged groups and renters from other places, and their incomes are generally low. Some elderly people have meager incomes. After deducting the cost of daily medical treatment, there is not much left.
When the elevator installation project starts, the owner needs to raise funds, which is under great pressure, and some elderly people in difficulties cannot afford it.
Therefore, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development has been advocating "a little bit of residents, a little social support, and a little financial subsidy" to raise funds through multiple channels.
The first is financial subsidies.
Various localities are introducing subsidy policies for the installation of elevators in old communities. Direct subsidies and targeted subsidies for disadvantaged groups are used to reduce the financial pressure on the installation of elevators in old communities.
For example, Gansu Province will provide a provincial financial subsidy of 100,000 yuan for each elevator, and the municipal finance will provide a supporting subsidy of not less than 100,000 yuan, and encourage district-level finance to also provide subsidies; Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province meets the conditions for applying elevator installations to existing residential buildings. And for the minimum living guarantee households that contribute funds, each household will be given financial subsidies according to 80% of the funds contributed by the installation of elevators.
The second is the personal burden of residents.
The "Opinions" proposed to support community residents withdrawing housing provident funds for the renovation of self-occupied houses such as the installation of elevators.
This provides a new channel for residents to raise funds.
The last is social funds.
Wang Dong suggested that third-party companies can reduce the burden on residents by providing financial support through revenue by developing peripheral functions of elevators, such as convenience services such as housekeeping, security, and advertising.
Where it is difficult to raise funds, the government can issue relevant policies to allow relevant companies to adopt the "agent construction and rental" model of "resident application, free installation, and paid use".
Uneven benefits are controversial
How to ensure low-level interests?
Grandma Li, who lives in a community in Haidian District, Beijing, was a little worried: her knee pain made it difficult to walk down the third floor.
Recently, she was very excited when she heard that elevators should be installed in the old quarters.
However, after communicating with several old neighbors on the first floor, Grandma Li found that the residents on the first floor seemed unwilling to install elevators.
In the "step ladder era", low-floor houses in old communities were welcomed by residents because they "climbed two steps to get home".
However, the installation of elevators will not only break this "advantage", it may also bring noise to low-rise residents, affect daylighting, etc., and then cause the depreciation of low-rise buildings.
With the addition of an elevator, his own house is even less valuable, and low-rise residents are naturally reluctant.
In order to protect the interests of low-rise residents, in recent years, various localities have introduced measures to compensate low-rise residents to a certain extent, so as to maintain the loss of interest in the devaluation of low-rise residents' houses during the installation of elevators.
In June 2019, Shantou City, Guangdong Province made it clear that the funds required for the addition of elevators to existing residences will be jointly funded by the implementing entities based on the floor and benefit size and other factors.
Among them, households on the first and second floors can get appropriate compensation, and households on the third floor may not share expenses.
It is worth noting that although local governments have issued relevant compensation regulations, there is no clear compensation standard.
Therefore, the amount of "low-level compensation" will often become a new point of dispute among neighbors.
Qiu Baoxing, Counselor of the State Council and chairman of the China Urban Science Research Association, suggested that it can be combined with three-dimensional parking, underground parking and the installation of elevators. Good contradiction resolution.
However, relevant experts also said that the compensation standard may not be set by the government. After all, the actual situation of each building is different, and it is difficult to have a unified compensation standard.
"The installation of elevators in some old buildings has a greater impact on the lower floors; but in some old buildings, the impact on the lower floors is not significant."
"One-vote veto" threshold is high
Can the "Civil Code" promote action?
In the early elevator installation work, many places adopted "one-vote veto": as long as one resident opposed the installation of elevators, the entire building could not be renovated.
Such more stringent conditions not only fail to reflect the majority opinions of some communities on the issue of elevator renovation, but also make it difficult to install elevators.
Therefore, in the subsequent policies for installing elevators in old communities, the "one-vote veto" has been gradually cancelled and the voting ratio has been liberalized.
Since the implementation of the Civil Code on January 1 this year, the percentage of residents agreeing to install elevators has been lowered again, paving the way for speeding up the installation of elevators in old communities across the country.
According to Lawyer Liu Yilin, a partner of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, according to Article 278 of the Civil Code, the joint decision of the owners should be the owner whose exclusive part accounts for more than 2/3 of the total area and the number of owners. More than 2/3 of the owners participated in the voting.
The installation of elevators in the community belongs to "reconstruction and reconstruction of buildings and their auxiliary facilities", and the decision to "reconstruction and reconstruction of buildings and their auxiliary facilities" shall be subject to voting by the owners of the exclusive part of more than 3/4 of the area and the number of voting participants More than 3/4 of the owners agree.
Compared with the previous regulations, the "Civil Code" reduces the requirements for the number of owners to vote and the proportion of the area of the exclusive part, that is, from "double 2/3" consent to "double 2/3 double 3/4" Just agree.
Liu Yilin believes that this new regulation emphasizes the participation and autonomy of owners, protects the voting rights of small owners, and fully embodies the principles of democracy.
However, there are also relevant people who believe that from "one vote veto" to 2/3 and then lower, on the surface, the threshold for residents to agree to install elevators has become lower. In fact, once a resident in a building clearly disagrees, it will often If you complain over the phone, or go directly to the site to obstruct the construction, the pace of installation will be slowed down.
In order to avoid conflicts among residents, some communities even had to ask for "one-vote veto" again as an implicit condition for installing elevators.
In the final analysis, the differences of opinion between the neighbors on the installation of elevators in old communities need to be bridged by mutual understanding among residents, community-level coordination and more comprehensive solutions.
Regarding neighborhood communication, the person in charge of Honglian Zhongli Community in Xicheng District, Beijing believes that the most important thing is to understand what the “difficult point” of each resident is.
From the intention to install elevators in November 2018 to the formal use of elevators at the end of 2019, the key to the completion of fast and high-quality communication in the Honglian Zhongli community is to understand the pain points of residents' installation, and then provide targeted solutions.
To this end, the community’s grassroots self-governing organization "Neighborhood", composed of party members, households, social workers and volunteers, went from house to house to communicate with residents. "If you have concerns about house depreciation, you will find a real estate agency to introduce the market situation. If you have any concerns about noise and lighting, you will invite them. On-site explanation of elevator companies".
By establishing in-depth communication between residents and setting up a smooth bridge for community consultation and governance, Honglian Zhongli Community has effectively solved the problem of installing elevators in Building 6 where more than 90% of residents are elderly.
This also sets a model for the community to play a role.
Yuan Zihan
Yuan Zihan