GEORGE TOWN: Penang Gerakan Youth claims that potential buyers have been shortchanged through ‘shrinking’ affordable housing units.

Its Legal and Public Complaints Bureau chief Jason Loo said the sizes of affordable units priced at RM300,000 and RM200,000 should be at least 850sq ft and 750sq ft respectively.

However, he claimed that the developer of a project in Sungai Ara offered ‘shrunken’ units, some measuring between 699sq ft and 728sq ft in place of the 750sq ft units.

He said there was also discrepancy for the 850sq ft units as some measured only between 728sq ft and 776sq ft.

Loo said under the latest housing policy, a developer should build 25% of affordable houses out of the total units approved by the state government.

“Since the Sungai Ara project has 892 residential units, there should be 224 affordable housing units.

“But we see only 146 units being built,” he said in a press conference at the state party headquarters in Macalister Road here.

Loo also said that if the project was approved before the affordable housing policy was introduced in August 2014, then the state government should order the developer to build 30% low-cost and low medium-cost units (as stipulated in the previous policy).

He hoped that state Housing Committee chairman Jagdeep Singh could offer an explanation on the matter as it was a public issue and Penangites needed an answer.