土地制度改革:中国有效应对全社会住房需求的重要保证

Land Reform and Affordable Housing—a Reflection on China’s Public Housing Program

中央政府近年来大力推进保障性住房体系建设。本文讨论了目前中国大规模保障性住房建设所取得的进展,并分析了过快推进保障性住房所可能存在的经济可持续性、融资渠道、地方政府激励与分配公平等诸多需要解决的问题。住房保障与保障性住房是两个有关联、但不完全一致的概念,通过土地和财政配套体制改革,中国完全可以以市场化的方式解决绝大部分新增城市化人口的居住问题,并同时实现地方财政从预算外土地财政向以财产税、土地增值税为主体的预算内财政转型,实现户籍制度改革有效突破,为经济带来新的增长点。这些改革将大大降低政府直接建设保障性住房的财政与管理压力,而配合以合适的金融体制改革实现保障性住房融资机制的突破,完全可以有效应对全社会住房需求的重大挑战。

The central government has accelerated its public housing program since 2008.This article discusses the progress already made and analyzes such unresolved problems as the economic sustainability of the program,financing channels,local government incentives and distributional equity.We propose that housing security and public housing are two related but very different concepts.We suggest that land reform by allowing rural collective construction land to enter the residential housing land markets,combined with the introduction of land value-added tax and property tax,would help to provide affordable housing for most of the migrants in China ’ s urbanization process and facilitate reform of China ’ s registered permanent residence.Moreover,such reforms would help realize a smooth transition of China ’ s local public finance from the distorted extra-budget revenue-based land finance to the budget-bound finance centered on land value-added.The move,in the meantime,will also help China secure a new growth engine and reduce the fiscal and managerial pressure on the government in directly getting involved in the construction of public housing.Combined with financing innovation in the public housing scheme,the move will enable the achievement of housing security for all in China ’ s urbanization in a situation unprecedented in human history.