Bucharest mayor wants to build thousands of social houses

The Bucharest City Hall plans to develop thousands of apartments for people with low financial resources via its new Metropolitan Construction Trust, according to Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea. The municipality’s new company will also offer housing solutions for medical personnel working in the city’s public hospitals. At first, the company plans to buy some 500 apartments for doctors and nurses. The next step is to develop its own residential projects. “The trust will not affect private businesses. We address a different niche, the social one. We have 3,000 unresolved requests for social housing. Very few cases are solved each year and the social tension is high. These cases don’t meet the criteria to get bank loans of credit from real estate developers and will remain without homes,” Firea said. She added that the new social houses will be built in areas close to subway stations or to well-connected public transport stops. However, as developing these projects takes time, the City Hall plans to buy some 500 apartments and studios close to hospitals, which will be allotted to doctors and nurses. The budget for this project is EUR 15 million. editor@romania-insider.com