Youth housing policy should be reoriented around guaranteeing tenant rights rather than focusing solely on expanding supply, participants said at a public hearing on housing supply expansion measures prepared by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT).
Choi Ha-eun, a standing activist at Minsnail Union, cited the results of the 2025 Housing Survey at the hearing on the 14th, saying, "Eight out of 10 young people live as tenants, and the direction of housing policy must shift toward protecting tenants."
Choi explained that 82.6% of young tenants live as renters, and that they spend 31% of the minimum wage on monthly rent alone, classifying them as households overburdened by housing costs. Including maintenance fees and utility bills, the actual burden is even greater, she said.
Although the right to request contract renewal guarantees four years, the average residency period for young tenants is only 3.6 years, meaning many move out before even using up the period guaranteed by law, she said. She also pointed out that those living in illegal buildings face a double burden, including physical risks such as noise as well as loan restrictions, inability to obtain deposit guarantee insurance, and inability to register their residence.
In particular, she noted that victims of jeonse (a Korean lease system requiring a large lump-sum deposit instead of monthly rent) fraud under the age of 40 account for more than 75% of the total, saying that with jeonse difficult to secure, monthly rent is excessively high, and even those who find stable housing constantly face the risk of deposits not being returned. She proposed, "Along with measures to prevent jeonse fraud, such as adjusting the timing of when opposing power arises and strengthening protection for small-deposit tenants, we need to introduce a cap limiting deposits to within 70% of the housing price, mandate registration for all private rental housing, and establish a housing inspector system." She also stressed that the public land at the Yongsan rail yard site should be banned from private sale and supplied as public rental housing.
Yoon In-han, who raises three children in public rental housing and works as a YouTuber on youth housing issues, pointed out that "the problem is that parents' income and assets are reflected in the selection process for public rental housing, such as youth purchase and jeonse rentals and youth safe housing." He said that over the past three years, the winning rate for third-priority young applicants in the Seoul area was only 0.4%, and proposed a priority-based quota system as an alternative, applying the priority-based volume allocation method already used in public and private housing sales to youth housing.
A young entrepreneur working on MOLIT's youth advisory group said that because newly built housing is small and rents are also high, young people still prefer older buildings. However, he noted the dilemma that older buildings carry a high risk of jeonse fraud, and proposed a method in which the public sector purchases existing housing to secure safety and then re-supplies it as new construction together with the private sector. He also said that diversifying newly built residential areas, currently supplied at a narrow 5 to 7 pyeong level for single-person households, and reflecting new housing forms such as shared kitchens, would ease young people's avoidance of new construction.
