Chapter 1332 - Housing Shortage

Sunlight filtered through the crudely made venetian blinds, falling across Yang Yun's face and making his conflicted expression unmistakable.

He was studying the report in his hands. His brows twisted into a knot, gradually relaxed, then twisted again like a cruller.

At his side, Dai Xiu, an intern from the Civil Affairs Department, stood bent at the waist with her head lowered in complete deference.

Dai Xiu was a Lingao native. Her family's ancestors had once been considered a scholarly household, but by her father Dai Degao's generation, they no longer engaged in literary pursuits and simply lived off their inherited farmland.

When the Australian pirates had suddenly landed, after the initial shock, Dai Degao had made quite a sum selling grain and vegetables to the leaders. Then, on impulse, he had sent his unmarried second daughter Dai Xiu to enroll in the National School.

By Ming dynasty aesthetic standards, Dai Xiu was the type of tall girl who would be hard to marry off. But Dai Degao knew from his dealings with the leaders that these "pirates" preferred tall, well-built women and disliked thin, delicate ones. Especially after the Liu family's daughter had married Transmigrator Xun, he had been moved to see if any leaders might take a liking to his daughter. Unfortunately, Dai Xiu was quite plain in appearance, and Fangcao Di's management was so strict that opportunities for one-on-one contact with male leaders were scarce.

After obtaining her Category B credentials, Dai Xiu—being over fifteen and without outstanding grades—couldn't continue to Senior Elementary. Since she was a self-funded student, her future wasn't controlled by civil affairs departments; she could choose her own career. Dai Degao had wanted her to come home and prepare for a good marriage, which would bring a bride price. But Dai Xiu no longer wanted to go home and marry early, so she had made her own decision to sign up as an administrative intern. Dai Degao had been unwilling at first, but he understood how resolute the Council was in implementing its will, so he could only let things take their course. Even if she couldn't bring in a bride price for now, at least she could support herself and bring some money home.

After passing the political review and being assigned to the Civil Affairs section, she worked in the government compound during the day. At night, leaders from Civil Affairs took turns giving specialized evening training. This way, not only were food and clothing assured with a bit of income, but she could also live in the staff dormitory without needing to return home.

At this moment, Dai Xiu wasn't afraid of the stern face across from her. Though Leader Yang occasionally made somewhat inappropriate flirtatious remarks, most of the time he was quite easy to get along with.

Her eyes glanced at Leader Yang's brand-new shirt—that snow-white stand-up collar looked so dashing. In her mind, she was calculating how much more she needed in saved currency before she could afford that coveted new pink blouse at East Gate Market.

The leaders were incredibly capable. That blouse not only had excellent workmanship and beautiful colors, but the collar was especially crisp. Wearing it made one look particularly smart. Ever since a dormmate who also worked part-time while studying had worn one, Dai Xiu had been green with envy. Though everyone said the pink ones faded especially easily, she still wanted one for herself.

"Xiao Xiu, come with me to Majiao."

The numbers in that report were confirming his original worries and pushing them toward reality. He planned to inspect the new residential district under construction at Majiao.

Though he had dispatched his apprentice to the Majiao New District construction site and received daily progress reports, he still wasn't as reassured as seeing things himself. Today wasn't busy—a perfect opportunity to go.

Dai Xiu answered with a "yes," tidied up the document folder and handed it over. Without any awkwardness, she extended her hands and, following the etiquette lessons taught at school, began helping the leader straighten his clothes.

Winter sunlight filtered through the venetian blinds, falling on Dai Xiu's face, adding a few traces of radiance to that ordinary countenance. Her formerly flat figure, after two years of nourishment from the National School's nutritious meals, had developed slight curves.

Yang Yun's throat moved involuntarily. The little schemer's designs on him had long been clear. Some male transmigrators, either openly or secretly, either actively or passively, had already gotten involved with these intern girls. After all, though most of these girls were plain in appearance, they came from local wealthy families—quite different in temperament from the mud-leg-origin life secretaries. Refined by their time at the National School, as a diversion from busy work, as long as one had no moral qualms about these half-grown girls, pushing them down was the kind of pleasure few men could have enjoyed in the old timeline.

A wicked smile involuntarily surfaced on his face. Yang Yun's gaze began to wander without restraint, roaming from the delicate collarbones before him to those vermilion lips. Watching two patches of bashful pink clouds rise on Dai Xiu's cheeks, his mood improved considerably. His life secretary had been pregnant for some time now. Shutting the office door and pushing down this little girl—just thinking about it was rather stimulating.

Leaving the administrative building, Yang Yun suppressed his desires. Leading Dai Xiu, whose complexion was gradually returning to normal, he walked toward the city gate. His mind resumed its calculations.

Whether the Majiao New District residential project could be completed on time—he really had no confidence. The civil construction branch company was working over there, with Zhang Xingpei as the only transmigrator playing lone commander. All other technical backbone were newly trained in the past two years. Due to weak technical capabilities, even though they were building proven designs, progress was sluggish and accidents constant. Just a few days ago, there had been a fatality.

Since returning from Qiongshan, Yang Yun had been busy lately with new migrant settlement work. The original plan to relocate people from population-rich counties like Qiongshan was a long-term project, but after the summer typhoon disaster, they had completed a year's migration quota ahead of schedule.

The problem was that Operation Engine's massive migration wave followed on its heels. These migrants, counting in the tens of thousands, had to be dispersed and settled in various places. Housing pressure suddenly became severe—especially in Lingao, the main county for population settlement, where the pressure was particularly enormous.

Though temporary settlement could still manage for now, how to settle so many people in already tight housing afterward had Yang Yun constantly worried recently.

Right now, most transmigrators were enthusiastically throwing themselves into Operation Engine. That was a major milestone in their forward march. These small troubles before their eyes naturally didn't register with them.

Lingao in the seventeenth century had an extremely low urbanization rate. Neither the county seat nor the various villages had many spare rooms to rent. Though the large influx of outsiders and skyrocketing rents and prices had prompted many Lingao people to begin building various types of housing on their own residential land, due to limitations of manpower and technology, the newly built houses were still far from meeting demand.

As far as he knew, many migrants who had flooded in from elsewhere but for various reasons hadn't entered the Lingao system faced tremendous housing pressure.

But there was no time to worry about that side for now. Housing was what stabilized hearts. So at this stage, resolving the housing supply-demand contradiction for naturalized citizens within the Lingao system was the focus of Yang Yun's work.

When the industrial zone had begun construction, in order to demonstrate the beauty of the new life, standard worker housing had originally been designed as uniform apartment buildings. But the construction department quickly learned the gap between ambition and capability—something that enthusiasm alone couldn't bridge.

So before long, the apartment buildings were upgraded to cadre housing. Fortunately, the naturalized citizens who had joined earliest had at minimum reached staff level, and even workers had become veterans—so there hadn't been major problems on this front.

But the new migrants who subsequently flooded into Lingao's industrial zone could only live in accommodations slightly better than the sheds in the quarantine zone.

To build in large quantities suited to Lingao's technical standards, the construction department copied 1950 Civil Building Design Reference following the early PRC industrial zone planning model. Lingao's civil buildings were divided into two major categories: dormitories and residences.

Dormitories were simple bungalows with a design service life of ten years, uniformly oriented north-south, with brick and tile as the main building materials. To save cement and construction time, the walls weren't plastered inside or out.

Per-person floor area in these dormitories, including living and common space combined, was 3.5 square meters. Each room held ten people; ten bungalows connected to form one block; eight blocks made one district with a public toilet, bathhouse, and cafeteria. Each district could hold 800 people. Currently, there were over thirty districts with capacity for over 20,000 people.

Dormitory rent was much less than the installment payments for apartment buildings. All along, most Lingao migrants had been single, and they were fairly satisfied with these cheap and sanitary accommodations—besides, they could look forward to buying residences in the future.

The residential situation was considerably more complex. Initially, aside from the modern apartment designs in the transmigrators' residential district, some bamboo-reinforced buildings had also been built on the outskirts of Hundred Fathoms City Industrial Zone. But bamboo wasn't safe enough—fine for irrigation channels, but mass deployment would be a ticking time bomb. Later, bamboo reinforcement was basically discontinued in civilian construction and replaced with steel.

These apartment buildings were copied from 1960s-70s southern Chinese state-owned enterprise family buildings—three-story south-facing exterior corridor design with multiple units per stairwell. To simplify design and construction, there were only two floor plans: 30 square meters of floor space for a one-and-a-half room unit, 60 square meters for a three-room unit, with built-in kitchens plus shared toilets and bathrooms. Ten units per floor, 1,260 square meters of floor space per building.

After building a few, they discovered that apartment buildings consumed too much labor and steel and cement—unsustainably so. Even in the original timeline's Lingao, from 1970 to 1978—nine years—only 197,900 square meters had been built, of which apartment buildings were merely 43,000 square meters—less than 5,000 per year.

Though the construction department worked tirelessly, operating essentially year-round except for typhoons and holidays, with 24-hour construction and workers laboring day and night, plus labor support from the industrial sector, military, and village conscript labor—because infrastructure, industrial, and public buildings took priority—dormitories had reached 90,000 square meters over two years, but residences totaled only twenty buildings and just over 20,000 square meters—a mere 600 units.

After the Chengmai battle, Lingao's situation had grown increasingly stable. Social and economic development had been rapid these past few years, and employment scale kept expanding. In terms of income, let alone cadres—even workers were considerably better off than local farmers. Many workers with connections in neighboring counties or across the strait had sent word home for brides. Currently, more than one hundred new families were added each month. Counting workers and cadres with families waiting to transfer from elsewhere who were waiting to buy housing, over two thousand households were waiting—that alone needed more than sixty apartment buildings, not even counting future additions.

(End of Chapter)