Construction work on some 40,000 subsidized housing units in Hebei province was completed in the first quarter of 2013 and they are ready for people to move in.

The first three months saw the completion of 119 affordable housing projects, involving government-subsidized housing and shantytown renovations. In doing so, the government covered about 18.3 percent of its 2013 quota, the provincial housing and urban-rural development bureau, announced on Wednesday.

The construction covers 264 projects to improve people's lives and accounts for 43 percent of the province’s total projects. More than half of this year’s projects are in the cities of Tangshan, Langfang, Cangzhou, Handan, and Baoding.

The funds needed for the rapid construction of affordable housing projects have been allocated and are available, more than 6.8 billion yuan in all, or 44.5 percent of the total investment earmarked for 2013. By the end of March, Shijiazhuang, Handan, and Langfang, three of the province’s 11 cities, had already used 80 percent of the total financing in the project construction.