Red Light for Gyeonggi-do's 'Farmer Basic Income and Social Housing'

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] The 'Farmer Basic Income' and 'Social Housing' projects that Gyeonggi Province planned to promote in the second half of this year have been consecutively halted by the Provincial Council, casting a red light on the future progress of these projects. These projects are key initiatives of Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung.

Gyeonggi Province announced on the 8th that the 'Farmer Basic Income Support Ordinance' and the 'Gyeonggi Province Social Housing Ordinance,' which were prepared to promote these two projects, were both deferred in the recent review by the Gyeonggi Provincial Council.

The Provincial Council previously deferred the review of the Farmer Basic Income ordinance, citing concerns about fairness with many other occupational groups such as artists if the basic income is paid only to farmers.

Regarding Gyeonggi Province social housing, the council decided to defer the ordinance, stating that allowing all homeless people to receive social housing regardless of their income level is controversial. The council particularly pointed out that the province’s excessive budget support for the social housing construction project could lead to financial waste.

The province plans to reorganize the issues raised about these two projects and then prepare the ordinances to resubmit them to the Provincial Council.

The Farmer Basic Income is a project strongly promoted by Governor Lee Jae-myung, which provides a certain amount of local currency to all farmers in the province on a per capita basis.

The province is seriously considering a plan to pay 50,000 KRW per person per month, totaling 600,000 KRW annually. Considering that the farming population in the province was about 296,000 as of the end of 2018, this would require a budget of approximately 177.6 billion KRW.

Based on the introduction of the Farmer Basic Income, the province is currently promoting the 'Farmer and Rural Basic Income Integrated Management System Construction' with a service fee of 420 million KRW.

Through this service, the province plans to establish a comprehensive management system covering the evaluation of the Farmer Basic Income promotion, target selection, information, and payment management. Development of an application for mobile users is also underway.

On the other hand, Gyeonggi Province social housing is long-term rental housing built and operated by social economy entities such as non-profit corporations, social enterprises, village enterprises, and cooperatives on land owned by public institutions.

Homeless people can live at affordable rents regardless of their income, which has the advantage of resolving supply blind spots and inter-class discrimination issues found in existing public rental housing.

The province planned to launch a pilot project for social housing with a scale of 50 households as early as next month. However, the Provincial Council raised issues about reducing excessive financial support for social housing and making all homeless people eligible for social housing supply, leading to the ordinance being deferred and delaying the project.

Provincial Council member Kim Tae-hyung (Democratic Party, Hwaseong 3) criticized, "Gyeonggi Province social housing may also be allocated to high-income homeless people, which insufficiently considers the policy intent of supporting housing-vulnerable groups. Especially, the province providing everything from land to project cost loans and interest resources could lead to indiscriminate financial execution and even allegations of preferential treatment."

The province has previously introduced and implemented the 'Youth Basic Income,' the first of its kind among local governments nationwide. The Youth Basic Income is an economic welfare policy that provides all youth residents in the province who turn 24 years old with 250,000 KRW quarterly, totaling 1 million KRW annually in local currency.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.