Beijing pledges investigation into shared housing

Beijing will try to put an end to the illegal shared housing problem in 2014, deputy mayor of Beijing said on Tuesday, the Mirror Evening News reported.

Chen Gang, deputy mayor of Beijing, said the city will start to find out the hidden dangers of illegal shared housing and launch a pilot project to deal with the issue in December.

According to a city regulation that took effect on July, tenants living in rental houses should enjoy no less than 5 square meters per person in one apartment. And there should be no more than two people living in one single room.

Many people who are subletting, however, rent houses from landlords and then put in bunk beds to rent to others. There have been cases in which more than 20 people are living in one apartment with two bedrooms, making the space shared by each tenant much smaller than 5 square meters and resulting in many hidden dangers.

The municipal government will also launch an investigation into the floating population and rental houses before Spring Festival in 2014, Chen said.