BEIJING, Nov. 15 -- Authorities have swooped on unscrupulous landlords who illegally cash in on the housing crisis by leasing tiny apartments to up to 10 renters - in some cases providing toilets as "rented rooms."

The practice, known as collective renting, was the focus of a crackdown in March which has cleaned up thousands of the city's crowded apartments.

In one case at Brilliant City, a residential complex in Putuo District notorious for collective renting, 231 people were housed in 25 apartments.

One three-bedroom flat had been divided into 10 separate rooms and was shared by 10 - even the toilet had become a rented room.

The practice was popular among migrant university graduates and workers to minimize rent but it raises health, safety, fire and noise concerns - and the ire of neighboring apartment owners who complain of their previously peaceful apartment blocks becoming crowded, noisy and dangerous.

Government spokeswoman Jiao Yang said the blitz resulted in about 4,300 illegally divided apartments restored to their original layouts - this accounts for about 40 percent of the apartments targeted for the clean-up.

She also released a newly-enacted government regulation that sets down requirements for companies and entities to temporarily transform spare houses into staff dormitories.

To solve accommodation needs for the soaring number of migrant workers in the city, the regulation allows companies to change non-residential spare houses into dormitories, but the rooms could only be provided and leased to the company's contracted workers.

The companies must be scrutinized to get approvals from district authorities before turning the properties into dormitories, the regulation said.

The rooms must ensure no less than four square meters of effective floor area for each person and a single room in the temporary dormitory should be accommodated by no more than eight persons; at least two toilets should be built if a storey holds more than 10 rooms in the dorm building, according to the regulation.

The Shanghai Housing and Land Resources Administrative Bureau has issued a notice stipulating the minimum space that could be allotted per person in a normal residential apartment should be no smaller than five square meters and reiterated that tenants could not make major renovations to an apartment without permission.

(Source: Shanghai Daily)