A residential building that has stood defiantly in the middle of a busy road in Haikou for the past two years was finally destroyed on Sunday.
The eight-storey building was what’s commonly known as a ‘nail house’ in or ‘dingzihu’ in Chinese – where homeowners refuse to accept compensation from a developer for its demolition.
Three years ago, developers of the Hongcheng Lake district in Qiongshan, an urban area in the city, began to carry out relocation work and offered compensation to residents of the 52 homes in the building.
However, several homeowners refused to accept the money and give up their homes, according to Hainan Daily.
As a result, for the past two years, eight lanes of traffic on the newly built Daoke Road had to squeeze into four in order to bypass the inconveniently located property.
According to the report, developers in January successfully reached an agreement with the last homeowner of the building on a revised compensation.
It took construction workers around 10 minutes to demolish the nail house on Sunday morning, it added.
The ‘nail house’ phenomenon is far from being rare. In fact, there are thousands of such homes across the country.
They are so called because they stick out and are difficult to remove, like a stubborn nail.
The government has passed a series of regulations to protect the land rights of holdout tenants, including outlawing the use of violence during evictions.
Rules also stipulated that market rate compensation must be paid to relocated residents.
However, when homeowners refuse compensation, developers must come up with creative ways to build around their homes.
As a result, these houses are often left awkwardly standing on their own in the middle of roads, construction sites, high-rise buildings, or nowhere.
