A family-based approach to public rental housing in Chongqing, China: a perspective of rural migrant households

Abstract

Since 2010, the city of Chongqing in south-western China has built 40 million square metres of public rental housing, responding to China’s New Urbanisation Plan. Due to its emphasis on massive provision and the role played by the state, public rental housing in Chongqing has attracted considerable attention. Yet few studies have examined the effects of this scheme on household strategies and experiences from the perspective of rural migrant families. The results of 120 semi-structured interviews with rural migrants show that they tend to adopt a family-based approach to maximise their households’ economic and non-economic interests when considering resettling.