Residents Remove from Block 138

Photo by Qi Chuanbin

By Qi Chuanbin

A number of removal vehicles were driven to Yuezhou Road, Block 138, Hongkou on the early morning of April 18, which made the quiet and old lane hum suddenly and represented the moving day for the residents in Block 138. More than 1,000 households will move out of the old houses one after another and start a new life.

"Although I had already packed everything, I didn't go to bed until twelve o' clock last night and got up excitedly before five o'clock this morning," said 61-year-old Yu Hongdi who was excited but wistful, and was about to say goodbye to the place that he has lived for more than 30 years. Divided functionally, his 20.5-square-meter house has a small living room for one person at the door and another room with a twin-bed and a wardrobe, leaving no other space. Yu's family of three all used to live here. Later, his son gets married, then the house can not accommodate them any more, so they have to move out.

In addition to narrow living space, Block 138 presents a very poor living environment. "Most of us don't have our own kitchen, and we still use hand night-stool and spittoons. There are loud crashes of all kinds of metal every morning. Due to the seriously-aging housing structure, there are several times that the water storage tanks upstairs are overturned, then the water permeates the roof and drips in my bedside." said Yu. After the second round of expropriation consultation, Yu and his wife signed the contract and chose a one-bedroom house in Rainbow Barbour.

Covering an area of 22,075 square meters, Block 138 ranges from Zhoushan Road in the east to Gongping Road in the west and from Zhoujiazui Road in the south to Yuezhou Road in the north, and involves a total of 871 resident certificates and 1,013 households. Each of nearly 60% of the houses covers less than 30 square meters. "The housing conditions are poor, so the residents are looking forward to the renovation for many years," said Ma Lizhen, Chief of the general Party branch of Yuezhou Residential Area. The first round of consultation reached 100% of consensus rate last August, but the second round scheduled in mid-February was postponed due to the outbreak.

Hongkou launched the second round of consultation for Block 138 on March 8, and started to resume the project of Shanghai's first renovation base this year, in order to comply with the expectations of the residents and improve the living conditions and environment as soon as possible.

Taking into account COVID-19 control, Lu Xuebin, Executive Deputy Commander of the Renovation Sub-headquarters of the Jiaxing Road Sub-district, reported that the District Renovation Headquarters, the Renovation Sub-headquarters of the Sub-district and the 2nd Expropriation Office made innovations in operation procedures, communication methods and information transmission, took non-contact measures, obtained in advance the WeChat accounts of the residents in Block 138, and reached the online contact rate of above 98%.

Further more, central parks, sidewalks and gates of lanes have set up 21 open areas as consultation sites for residents, and the 2nd Expropriation Office makes innovations in taking the method of online priority and offline reservation to minimize the gathering of personnel. In response, it reached 98.28% of signing rate on the first day of the second round of consultation, which makes Block 138 the first land reaching the standard in Shanghai after production resumption.

It is learned from the Jiaxing Road Sub-district that Block 138 mainly takes the method of in-advance booking and off-peak working because the epidemic situation has not ended yet, organizes the contracted residents to move out in an orderly manner, and removes garbage in time. Up to now, nearly half of the residents has moved out.