Exclusive: Over 8,000 LH Happy Home units sit vacant for more than a year

More than 8,000 Happy Home units supplied by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation have sat vacant for over a year, with critics saying the public rental housing program has failed to match actual residential demand from young people and newlyweds.

According to data submitted by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation to the office of Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Yoon Jong-gun of the National Assembly's Land and Transportation Committee, 8,284 of the 153,680 Happy Home units managed by the corporation had been vacant for at least one year as of August.

Happy Home is a public rental housing program aimed at young people, including youth and newlywed couples. The number of units vacant for more than a year rose consistently — from 3,181 in 2022 to 5,812 in 2025 — and climbed further to 8,284 by August, roughly 2.6 times the 2022 figure.

Units vacant for six months or more reached 15,496 as of August, accounting for 10.1 percent of all managed units — meaning one in 10 Happy Home units has been empty for more than half a year. That figure rose from 6,107 in 2022 to 10,597 in 2024, dipped slightly to 9,814 last year, then jumped again this year.

The Korea Land and Housing Corporation has been running additional recruitment drives and relaxing eligibility requirements to fill the empty units, but the vacancy problem has proven difficult to resolve. Over the past three years, 354 Happy Home complexes held additional recruitment drives at least twice, and 147 of those complexes did so five or more times.

Eligibility criteria — including income and asset requirements — were relaxed in 692 cases across 233 complexes. Even after lowering the bar for prospective tenants, long-term vacancies continued to grow.

The corporation attributed the rising vacancies to a lack of location appeal, inadequate transportation and lifestyle infrastructure, restrictions on eligible tenant groups, and low demand for small-sized units.

As of July, units with an exclusive use area of less than 30 square meters accounted for 27 percent of all public rental housing under construction, but the figure for Happy Home stood at 55 percent — roughly double the overall share. Analysts say a mismatch has emerged between the supply of public rental housing and the actual residential preferences of prospective tenants.

In response, the corporation has been merging small units to create larger ones. In the Hwaseong Dongtan 2 district in Gyeonggi Province, eight units of 16 square meters were combined into four units of 33 square meters. Similar unit-consolidation remodeling projects for 16-square-meter units are also underway in Gimpo Yanggok and Gimhae Yulha 2 district through a vacancy-reduction initiative launched last year.

Critics argue, however, that simply repeating recruitment drives or loosening eligibility requirements has limited effectiveness in addressing long-term vacancies.

"There is a need to identify inventory that does not match demand by looking comprehensively at vacancy duration, the number of recruitment rounds, unit size, location and target tenant group," Yoon said. "Management standards and medium- to long-term improvement plans must be drawn up — whether that means maintaining existing Happy Home units as they are, adjusting the target tenant pool, or pursuing unit consolidation and remodeling."