HEFEI - Tao Yong, a young teacher at Zaojia Middle School, Changfeng county of Hefei, provincial capital of East China's Anhui province, said he is eager to have a real home for his family.

Lacking good accommodations, the school - sitting at the juncture of three counties within the province - was forced to have local teachers live in nearby farmers’ homes.

However, Tao said it was hard to rent a long-term house in the village, because the owners going out for temporary jobs would come back anytime. During the past five years, Tao had to move every three or four months.

Including Tao, Changfeng’s 7,806 schoolteachers each were living in an area of 4.3 square meters at the end of 2010, according to the Hefei Municipal Bureau of Education.

In recent years, housing for students in Hefei have improved with lodging at schools and rebuilt schoolhouses, but residences for schoolteachers was still insufficient.

After local administrative changes in 2011, Hefei, with some 7 million registered residents, now has one subordinate city, four districts, four counties and four development zones under its jurisdiction.

In order to end the housing shortage for teachers, especially for rural teachers, Changfeng is planning to spend five years building houses for schoolteachers. A program aimed at building 2,477 new lodging houses has been put forward.

Along with building lodging houses, two other counties in Hefei also emphasized constructing public-rent houses during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), which will greatly benefit rural teachers.