Basement and semi-basement housing units transformed into storage space

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Two years ago, a family living in a semi-basement unit was tragically lost due to sudden heavy rain in Seoul.

To prevent such incidents, a public project is being promoted to support the moving out of residents in semi-basement units and to utilize these spaces for storage or community facilities.

Reporter Oh Dae-seong has the details.

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This is a villa located in a residential area of Seongdong-gu, Seoul.

It belongs to one of the "purchase rental" projects by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH), which buys private buildings and rents them out at low prices to vulnerable populations.

Since it is an old building, it inevitably has semi-basement units, but if you go down, you will find a different space instead of a home.

As you can see, there are various sizes of storage lockers where personal belongings can be stored.

They operate 24 hours a day without staff.

Until recently, it was a place where people lived, but it has been transformed into a storage facility after renovations.

LH announced that it has stopped supplying semi-basement units since 2020 for safety reasons and has completed the relocation of 909 out of 1,810 existing households.

The storage facility was the first idea to utilizing the now vacant semi-basement spaces.

[Park Hyun-hye/LH Seoul Regional Headquarters Housing Service Team Deputy Chief: "If the empty space becomes a crime-prone area and accidents occur, or if rental assets funded by taxpayers are not utilized, it would be a waste... We turned 7 units this year (the semi-basement storage facility), and ten more are planned for next year."]

The Seoul Housing and Communities Corporation (SH) is also purchasing semi-basement units and converting them into community spaces for residents instead of housing.

With over 300,000 households nationwide living in semi-basement and basement units, there seems to be a need for ideas on how to utilize the increasing vacant spaces along with support for their housing upgrades.

This is KBS News, Oh Dae-seong.