As residential compounds built around the turn of the millennium cross the 25-year mark, a new wave of challenges is emerging across Shanghai's older neighborhoods. This summer, a citywide survey of multiple housing estates revealed that the question of "how to maintain" aging infrastructure has become a pressing concern for communities where facilities are deteriorating and budgets are stretched thin.

In Baoshan District's Zhuyou Baolian Garden, a decorative landscape pond has dried up and begun to emit foul odors. Residents wish to restore it, but the high costs have deterred property managers. Meanwhile, in Hongkou District's Jingming Garden, ceiling leaks above street-facing shops persist even on sunny days, yet the necessary repairs remain unfunded. Many communities that underwent unified facade renovations years ago are now seeing those improvements enter a concentrated aging phase, with the risk of falling objects from height becoming a growing safety hazard—and maintenance responsibility becoming a hot potato nobody wants to hold.

Shanghai's housing stock built around 2000 is now well past its 25th year, and the legacy infrastructure from the city's construction boom is hitting its own "midlife crisis." The transition from "affordable to build" to "affordable to maintain" has become a new test for community governance. The core issue is how to keep the financial resources of residential compounds alive.

When reporters visited Zhuyou Baolian Garden and Jinhui Lishe in July, both communities' landscape ponds had been out of service for several years. At the same time, the leaking shopfronts outside Jingming Garden had been unresolved for over six months. These inconveniences affect daily life, and while property managers are fully aware of the problems, the reason for the repeated delays is simple: insufficient funds.

Maintenance of community facilities relies on the repair fund—the financial backbone for upkeep. When the fund is depleted and can't be replenished, management grinds to a halt. Behind the "not enough money" problem lie two intertwined bottlenecks. The first is mismanagement of public revenue. Public income—from parking fees, advertising, parcel locker rentals, and charging station revenues—is supposed to be a vital supplement to the repair fund, acting as a "living water" source for the community's purse. Most Shanghai communities do generate some income, but in many, this money has long been an opaque "muddled account."

For instance, in Pudong New Area's Pinzhen International Sanming Apartments, delivered 16 years ago, public revenue has never been disclosed, with the property company consistently claiming "zero income." In Yangpu District's Bus New Village, the revenue disclosures are equally unclear: zero in the first half of the year, only to suddenly record a thousand yuan in the second. The reasons: the former estate has had no owners' committee for over a decade, while the latter's committee members are aging and lack professional expertise. The long-term absence of effective self-governance has left these accounts vague and unverifiable.

Even though national laws like the Civil Code and the Property Management Regulations, along with Shanghai's own residential property management rules and public revenue management measures, provide a legal framework, weak grassroots self-governance and underperforming owners' committees make consistent oversight nearly impossible. The public revenue issue is superficially about "unclear accounts," but fundamentally it's about "no one in charge."

The second bottleneck is the weak mechanism for replenishing the repair fund. If public revenue is the "living water," then fund replenishment is the "foundation" of the financial purse. Without a robust system to top up the fund, even ample income cannot cover major repairs. "The initial collection of repair funds, tied to property certificates, is largely done well, but the mechanism for replenishment after funds are exhausted is very weak," noted a July survey by a social practice team from East China University of Political Science and Law's Criminal Law School. Team leader Xiong Enlan found that under current regulations, replenishment duties fall entirely on the owners' committee. If the committee is paralyzed, stuck in electoral deadlock, or simply negligent, the process cannot even begin.

The research team proposed targeted suggestions to introduce "hard" constraints into the replenishment process. These include specifying conditions under which neighborhood committees can step in to perform collection duties on behalf of the owners' committee when the latter fails; adjusting the initial repair fund contribution cost based on a construction cost index (weighted by building materials, labor, and residential CPI) every three to five years to keep contributions aligned with actual repair costs; and adding a standardized clause in resale home contracts that requires the balance to be topped up to at least 30% of the initial amount at the time of transaction, shifting the responsibility to the real estate sale point and preventing future problems.

Beyond funding, the "second half" of renovation projects—post-completion upkeep—is also a sticking point. Shanghai has made significant strides in upgrading older neighborhoods through government-led initiatives, but these are facing an awkward situation. When uniformly installed facilities age out, questions of who maintains them and who pays for it become tangled disputes. The core problem isn't whether the government should act, but that a critical step is often missing before work begins: clearly defining the "afterlife" of these projects.

In many facade renovation projects, details like who will be responsible for maintenance after the warranty period and where the money will come from are never written into the plan. When the uniformly installed air conditioner covers, awnings, and drying racks exceed their warranty, residents argue that "the government did this, not us," especially when they weren't consulted beforehand and only received a notice before construction started. Property management departments, on the other hand, insist that "whoever uses it should pay," leaving responsibilities so ambiguous that in the end, nobody takes charge.

A telling contrast emerged during the survey: in Changning District, some residents, dissatisfied with proposed renovation plans, collectively chose to forgo millions of yuan in approved facade renovation funds after thorough discussion, preferring to wait and self-fund future repairs. In Putuo District, another community passed a plan with insufficient detail disclosure, only to halt the project midway through construction. This shows that the more inclusive the early participation and the clearer the division of responsibilities, the fewer disputes—even if residents reject the renovation itself. Conversely, hastily launched projects often breed conflicts that surface later.

At a deeper level, the failure to address the "second half" stems from what remains a "construction mindset" that only counts the upfront investment, not the ongoing maintenance costs. One grassroots official admitted that some communities pay property fees of just 0.8 yuan per square meter, yet renovations were done to high standards for landscaping—which withered within six months. "We spent a fortune building something that was never going to be sustainable."

The way forward is clear: shift from "arguing after the fact" to "agreeing beforehand," making the division of responsibility and financial arrangements explicit before work begins. Experts suggest drawing on the mature experience of demolition and relocation processes, where residents are consulted in writing, household by household, on whether to proceed, how to renovate, and who will maintain the results. This could involve a "two-round consultation" before any project starts: the first to gauge willingness, and the second to nail down specifics like facility selection, warranty periods, and maintenance cost sharing, with joint participation from the neighborhood committee, owners' committee, property company, and design units, leading to a signed responsibility agreement. When a project is approved, the future maintenance costs should also be calculated, with funding sources clearly stated in the agreement. For higher-risk facilities, warranty periods could be extended, or a portion of the project payment held back as a maintenance guarantee.

With money and responsibilities sorted, the final piece of the puzzle is people. Today's community governance involves far more than just the property company. As issues become more detailed and stakeholders multiply, the real test lies in organizing these dispersed forces effectively. Take Fuan Building in Jing'an District, where two elevators had been operating for over 20 years and were aging and failure-prone. After the previous property company withdrew, the new one was slow to arrive, leaving elevator replacement and maintenance in limbo. It was the Jurong Residential Party Branch that stepped in—coordinating with market regulation and street management departments to ensure basic maintenance and safety while mobilizing willing residents through building meetings and door-to-door visits, pushing forward the elevator replacement alongside the owners' committee election. Once the new committee was formed, transparent bookkeeping and resident consultation became the norm, creating a more stable foundation for cooperation.

The party branch's intervention resolved more than the elevator issue; it established connections between residents, the owners' committee, and the property company, fostering a collaborative governance mechanism. Shanghai has already issued multiple policy documents, including measures on party-led property management and guidelines for the standardized operation of owners' assemblies and committees, explicitly promoting a coordinated model under the leadership of residential party organizations involving neighborhood committees, owners' committees, and property service companies. Institutions are beginning to provide the framework; what's needed now is to get the people within that framework actively engaged.

Yan Jiawei, vice president of the Shanghai Society Research Association, argues that grassroots governance should evolve from solving specific problems to building community identity. "We need to avoid relying on a few individual 'capable people' for governance. Party organizations at the grassroots level should do their work patiently, proactively identifying residents willing to participate in public affairs during daily visits and building meetings, gradually establishing a reserve of community governance backbone so that participation doesn't lapse with personnel changes."

This reserve could also become more professional. As tasks like public revenue management, repair fund oversight, facility maintenance, and project renovations become more complex, communities could build a local talent pool, tapping into residents' expertise in law, finance, engineering, horticulture, and design. When specific matters arise, professional residents can be organized to participate, letting people in the community solve the community's problems. Once people are found, platforms for discussion are also essential. Experts recommend establishing regular consultation mechanisms for issues of common interest—such as public revenue, parking management, and facility maintenance—rather than only convening parties after problems arise. This regular interaction changes more than just problem-solving; it transforms the relationship between residents and their community. Residents move from merely voicing demands and waiting for responses to developing a sense of ownership through repeated participation in discussions.

Community governance is shifting from the "construction era" to the "maintenance era"—a difference of two words, but a fundamental transformation in logic. Construction relies on investment and projects, prioritizing short-term results; maintenance relies on systems and accountability, prioritizing long-term benefits. To make communities that were "affordable to build" truly "affordable to maintain," money must flow, responsibilities must be defined upfront, and people must be united.