One large room is partitioned off like a mini hotel, with one narrow corridor in the middle and small rooms on both sides. Each partition wall is made of drywall plaster board, which is unstable and flimsy. If something knocks against it, the board will make a banging sound.

There is no kitchen or sitting room because they have been rented out as living spaces. The bathroom cannot be kept clean all the time and no household appliances are provided either. In spite of the poor living conditions of these group-oriented rental houses, many young people with low wages resort to living in these cubicle-sized spaces because of the low rent.

For example in Beijing, tenants include migrant workers, fresh graduates and students. According to statistics from the market research center of real estate agency Wawj, the average rental in Beijing in 2009 was 2,292 yuan ($335.72). As many of the above-mentioned tenants earn on average 2,000 to 3,000 yuan per month, they cannot afford to rent a single room. As long as there is a low-income population, group-oriented rental houses will be here to stay.

Wang Hai and one of his classmates are tenants of a group-oriented rental home. They moved to Guan Yuan Apartment in Xicheng District in 2009, after graduating with master’s degrees in Beijing. Both are working for small private enterprises earning meager wages, so they have to live in this kind of housing to save money.

Wang told the Global Times, “As we have just graduated, our salaries are quite low, about 2,000 yuan per month, so we cannot afford an apartment that costs over 1,000 yuan in rent. Some of my friends suggested I live in the basement, but it is more humid and dirty there. Group-oriented leasing homes then became our best choice.”

Another tenant Li Ying agrees. She has been living in Tiantongyuan, Changping district in Beijing for nearly two years after graduating from Hunan University of Commerce in 2007.

Li works as a receptionist in a three-star hotel in Beijing. When asked about her experience living in group-oriented rental houses, she sighed and said, “I have to share the space with another 12 people in various low-income jobs. My room is full of beds and luggage. Whenever I think of sharing one bathroom and hardly breathe fresh air, I get a headache, but I have no choice. If I rented a single room, I would spend most of my income.”

She described the apartment as a garbage dump. The 400-yuan rental area includes water and electricity charges, so all the roommates take advantage of all the electrical outlets.

Li said, “Many electrical wires are entwined together. You can imagine how dangerous it is! There is no gas for cooking, so some of them use toaster ovens to cook food.”

In addition, there are other potential problems and dangers, Li said. “The tenants come from a number of different backgrounds. We don’t know each other well. Arguments can spark over such disputes as using bathroom and consuming electricity.

“Our lives are constantly disturbed because once there is a room vacant, the landlord will bring new people in to look at the place,” Li complained.

Actually most landlords do not even know their apartments have been divided into so many small rooms because they would rather just deal with real estate agencies.

Liu Yulan bought an apartment with four bedrooms in Xin Jiayuan in Beijing’s Xuanwu district at the end of 2007. She decided to let the real estate agency manage her property in January 2009 because she wanted to use the rent to purchase another apartment.

However, she was never told her place would be turned into group-oriented leasing. A neighbor of the property accused her making noises and disturbing the peace two months after she acquired the place. When Liu arrived to see what all the fuss was about, she was shocked to discover there were 13 people living in her apartment.

“Some of these rental agencies are quite fraudulent,” Liu said. “They are two-sided and do not follow the terms of the contract. Look at my house. It is nearly destroyed,” Liu claimed. After argument with the real estate agency, they broke the contract and removed the partition walls.

Real estate agencies are keen on group-oriented leases because they can earn several times the original rental amount in renting out several rooms. Tenant Yang Guangyu lives in a group-oriented rental in Shuangjing, Chaoyang district in Beijing since September, 2009.

“I once asked about the price of a single room in the Shuangjing area. It is about 1,300 yuan per month. The agency fee is one-month rental. Because it was beyond my budget, I finally chose to live in a group-oriented leasing house. Now, my rental for a shared room is 400 yuan. And as far as I know, the original rent for this apartment was 2,800 yuan per month. So far, there are 13 people living here. You can imagine the price difference the rental agency earns. But we cannot do anything because we need an affordable place to live.”

However, with all the problems and disputes that are caused by group-oriented leasing, are there any laws and regulations to deal with these situations? Huang Xianhua, a lawyer with Beijing Yijia Law Firm and CEO of law-credit.com, told the Global Times that “group-oriented leasing is a social phenomenon but not a legal concept. It belongs in the category of house leasing.

“Landlords and tenants should follow the terms in the Landlord and Tenant Law,” Huang continues. “There are no laws and regulations specifically dealing with group-oriented rental houses so far. The problems of group-oriented leasing should be handled by different governmental sectors, according to their situation. For instance, the Department of Public Safety is in charge of security problems; the Property Bureau is responsible for property ownership certificates; the Construction Commission is in charge of infrastructure. There are only two legislative authorities for landlords and tenants to refer to, that is, the contract and Landlord and Tenant Law.”

“The solution to this phenomenon should be derived from resolving the issue of social problems such as high housing prices and difficulties in job-hunting instead of unilaterally drafting laws for it,” Huang said.

Confronting this problem, the deputy director of the Institute of Comprehensive Management on Security of Society at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences Yuan Zhenlong told the China News Net “the phenomenon of group-oriented leasing also reflects the housing problems of Beijing’s migrant population.

Due to the rapid progress of urbanization, a great number of migrant people come to the cities. In big cities, it is hard to find a decent job and they are usually hired with low salaries. They have to live in group-oriented rental houses due to the high housing prices. To solve this problem, local governments should encourage the construction of more apartments or houses for low-income populations to meet their housing needs.”