China has established rules for "homeowner committees" to motivate urban property owners to organize and administer their neighborhood affairs through community elections and self-governance. However, this well-intentioned plan has met resistance from property management companies and local governments.
Chen Fengshan was threatened, the corridor outside his home was coated with feces and a cremation urn was placed outside his door.
The founder and head of the "homeowners committee" of his Beijing residential community, Chen has been battling with the property management company over the ownership of the community's public facilities since 2009.
Parking space rent revenue in the community generates more than 2 million yuan ($300,000) a year. Chen believes it belongs to all the homeowners in the community according to Chinese law. Currently, the property management company pockets all of it.
Although the committee is legally entitled to choose and dispose of property management companies, this is usually difficult to achieve as these companies resist losing their control of a community.
Besides personal attacks, banners emblazoned with anti-committee slogans have been hung around the community by the company. On the day in 2009 that the homeowners committee held their election, the polling station was damaged by hired thugs, the committee's office was vandalized and committee members and volunteers received death threats.
The election failed in the face of this harassment. Later on when the committee came to its next election, many members chose to quit instead of staying on. "The community's self-governance then failed, which is a shame," Chen said.
Seeing the power imbalance between the homeowners committee and the property management company, Chen studied the laws regarding property rights and now provides legal support to homeowner organizations inside and outside Beijing.
He now represents more than a dozen homeowner committees.
Legal guarantee
Though they often feel powerless in the face of thuggish management companies, homeowner committees were meant to be rather muscular.
The National People's Congress approved the Real Right Law in 2007, which promoted the concept of self-governance by property owners in urban residential communities, allowing homeowners living in the same community to create "homeowner congregations" to administer the affairs of their neighborhood. A standing "homeowner committee" should be chosen by residents to act on behalf of all homeowners, according to the law.
It was hailed by many at the time as an important step toward democracy on the grass-roots level. After more than three decades of the development of the real estate industry, hundreds of millions of Chinese urbanites now own properties. As their awareness of their rights rises and they want to have more say over how things are run, disputes between homeowners and property management companies are increasingly common.
Chen believes that homeowner committees acquiring legal status is only the first step toward allowing homeowners to exercise their rights.
He told the Global times that Chinese homebuyers are not fully aware of their property rights, only caring about the space inside their door but ignoring their collective ownership of the community's public spaces and facilities.
But when a person buys a property, a great part of their rights - over the public facilities - have already been taken on by the property management company. Only by establishing a homeowners committee can property owners represent their interests.
"The fact that property management companies are mostly chosen by the property developer - some are subsidiaries of the developers - means the property management companies have a natural advantage over property owners where conflicting interests occur," said Chen.
Under attack
While there are no official figures about how many communities have established homeowner committees, Chen estimates that of the more than 5,000 communities in Beijing, about 20 percent have done so. But many committees end up collapsing like Chen's did.
In practice, many activists complain it's unexpectedly difficult for such committees to act. Even the very first step - establishing a homeowner committee - often proves to be a daunting task.
In Swan Bay, one of the communities which Chen has advised, just organizing an election proved impossible.
