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Early one evening my father called for a meeting of our neighbours. As elected head of the neighbourhood committee of the apartment building, he discussed with tenants things we must do to keep the building and surrounding area clean.

I remembered that meeting because on the morning of the coming Sunday, most of our neighbours came out with brooms, mops, pieces of rag or basins. I joined the commotion, cleaning step by step the stairways. Most of all I enjoyed splashing water over the stairway and watching the water flow down.

By noon, our building's courtyard was tidy and clean. The stairways and walls of corridors were almost shining.

But that happened more than 30 years ago.

Today, high-rise apartment buildings dominate cities' skylines and more and more urbanites enjoy bigger apartments in fancier residential communities. In Beijing alone, per capita housing had already risen to 22 square metres in 2001, more than doubling the figure three decades ago.

The increase in per capita housing has remained on top of the accomplishment chart of every level of government.

However, as the number of urban homeowners rises steadily and life on the whole gets better, their complaints against real estate developers and property management have also become louder.

Indeed their frustration grows when they discover the flats they have paid for are short of space or lack green acreage as stated in their contracts with the developers and when they have little room to manoeuvre, and withdraw their purchase.

Their discontent often is aggravated after they move in, only to find the property management companies installed by developers do not offer services to meet the often high expectations of homeowners.

Their life is made more difficult when their hot tap water is cut off by property management companies, or when property management companies quietly walked out, leaving homeowners to live in rising garbage piles and suffer from random thievery, or when two competing property management companies run into a stalemate with hounds participating, to cite just a few pieces of news reported since New Year's Day.

To make things worse, no one seems to care about the homeowners' dissatisfaction. Homeowners have not won a single case against property management in Beijing, while property management companies have won almost all the cases against homeowners, who have refused to pay not only management fees but also electrical and water bills.

Homeowners have been partly to blame as they have not organized themselves to effect improvements in their communities while regulating their own conduct as neighbours.

The days when many urbanites were crowded in small apartments rented from their work units and when most neighbours were colleagues are long gone. Also gone is the trust and team spirit shared by neighbours at that time.

There are homeowners who use their dissatisfaction about property management as excuses for not paying for electricity, gas, central heating and water, which are in the domain of public utilities, not resources of property management. There are also those who throw their home garbage from their windows and who let their dogs pee and litter everywhere in public grounds.

The developers and property management companies should take the blame for the homeowners' weal and woe. The market economy does not mean making money while infringing upon the rights and interests of customers, which are often the root causes of the conflicts between homeowners and developers or property management.

But the governments at different levels should take a larger chunk of the responsibility as they have not effectively regulated the conduct and businesses of the developers and property management companies by law and pushed them to improve their services.

Governments have too many priorities on their agenda to take homeowners' grievances seriously at present. But they should, in due time, as increased discontent and injustice the homeowners suffer will not contribute to sustained social harmony, as it has already been evidenced by blockades and other activities homeowners have staged over the past few years.

(China Daily January 5, 2006)