Guideline aims to ensure more land for senior facilities

Newly built residential districts should have a piece of land designed for service facilities for seniors, and the insufficient existing facilities need to be optimized to satisfy the needs of elderly people, according to a guideline released by the Ministry of Natural Resources on Thursday.

The guideline aims to instruct local authorities to strengthen planning and ensure an effective supply for land use for senior living facilities, as ways to support the development of elderly care.

The land use for senior living facilities refers to those providing daily care, rehabilitation nursing, medical services and more exclusively for elderly people.

Nonprofit institutions for elderly care can apply for land allotted by local government, while companies are encouraged to obtain the land by renting and leasing, which guarantees various needs for elderly care.

The transaction fees of land for senior care facilities cannot be lower than 70 percent of the standard price of land used for public service purposes, according to the guideline.

Local governments are encouraged to take advantage of existing resources such as unused school buildings, warehouses and vacant houses in the community to build senior service facilities.

Nonprofit institutions that turn existing resources into senior service facilities don’t need to pay additional fees for the land, the guideline indicates.

The government will strictly limit the rezoning of land for senior service facilities, and make regulations respectively to institutions that no longer use the land for elderly care due to private reasons.

The situation of land use for senior living facilities will be absorbed into the credit system for the land market. Those who rezone permitted land reserved for senior care for other purposes will be put into a blacklist, said Du Guanyin, deputy director of the exploitation department of the administration.

Different provinces and cities should plan the scale, standard and overall arrangements of the land use for senior living facilities in accordance with their own demographic structure and aging problem.

Li Feng, a staff member with the spatial planning department of the administration, said that the proportion of land use for senior service facilities would be higher in regions with more severe aging problems.