Study On The Legal Issues Of Housing Cooperatives In China

Housing is the basic need of human beings for surviving. Whether a country is able to properly solve the housing problems is not only related to whether people's interests will be turned into reality, but is also related to to what extent the country will stay in stability. From the macro view, it relies on the housing supplying regime of a country to solve the problem. The housing supplying regime can be defined as a system in which the government provides people with different kinds and forms of houses according to their income levels and economic situations. On the whole, a country's housing supplying regime is composed of two parts, namely the commercialization housing regime and the public housing regime, and the latter is aimed at the medium-income and low-income groups. The housing cooperative is a significant carrier of the public housing regime.A housing cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common housing needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise. You can find out that its goals, values and principles all exemplify the concept of trying for interests of the members, democracy and unity by thorough analysis.As a kind of entity, housing cooperatives play a key role in solving the housing problems of the medium-income and low-income groups, for its advantages are cooperation, unity and low costs. Wherever housing cooperatives thrive, the housing needs of he medium-income and low-income groups are relieved, and the public housing regime runs effectively. In Germany, whose housing industry is prosperous and stable, 30.9% houses are supplied by housing cooperatives. In the USA, housing cooperatives are the important carriers of high quality and particular requirements of the high-income group and the group who calls for specialization and social status. All of these indicate that housing cooperatives'organization and operation mode is efficient and optimizing, and they play an indispensable part in a country's housing supplying regime.China used to have a large number of housing cooperatives. However, they waned due to some reasons. Considering the basic state of China, since the marketization and monetization of housing started before more than a decade ago, the price of houses goes up continuously, and vastly surpasses the buying ability of common people, the result of which is the falling through of people's buying plans. On the contrary, the real estate companies earn high profits. The combination of the two phenomena makes the housing problem a focus. Although China has applied economical housing regime and cheap tenancy housing regime, they are inefficient because of their inborn weaknesses or narrow scopes. The characteristics, successful running experiences and process from culmination to decline of housing cooperatives in China make it the best choice to get rid of the housing dilemma for China.In recent years, people in China paid attention to housing cooperatives again and launched"collecting funds for cooperative house-building"movements. However, due to the lacking of related laws and policies, these movements are now becoming farther and farther from success because they are in short of definite running modes and regime specifications. Therefore, on the basis of completely knowing the significant effect of housing cooperatives, it is essential and urgent for China to design regimes for them.The designer should stand on the internal operation and external trade of housing cooperatives. As to internal operation, the right to decide the ownership of cooperative houses should be assigned to the cooperatives, for it can both reflect the democratic control and take into account different needs. No matter in the progress of establishment or running, the internal and external risk control is indispensable. Making it clear the responsibilities of the sponsors, applying scientific and reasonable managing and decision-making structure, establishing responsibility investigation regime, instituting the responsibility nature and rights and obligations to avoid being trapped in disputes are the main contents. As to external operation, it is necessary to establish the regimes for housing cooperatives to get access to the land and to gain construction capitals smoothly. Perfecting housing policy finance systems and encouraging banks to provide low rate loans to housing cooperatives by granting subsidies to them are both efficient measures to promote the rapid and healthy development of housing cooperatives.