Hanoi officials said the capital city will take strong and decisive action to get rid of super-thin houses, once and for all.

In the past five years, the city has failed repeatedly to eliminate the homes, which officials say are bad for the city image.

News website VnExpress quoted Deputy Chairman of the Hanoi People’s Committee Phi Thai Binh as saying that districts around the city will have to eliminate all the thin houses by the end of March.

Owners of neighboring houses are encouraged to broker sales among themselves, creating larger land lots for larger houses. If their negotiations fail, which is usually the case, the authorities will have to seize their lands and pay them the necessary compensation.

Binh said the city issued a decision in 2005 to take back small pieces of land, but district officials had not been strict enough in enforcing the edict, leaving many thin houses untouched.

According to VnExpress, Hanoi still has nearly 300 thin and badly-shaped houses, mainly in Thanh Xuan, Dong Da and Ba Dinh Districts.

The city requires all houses to be at least three meters long, but local media reports said some houses are only 0.7-1 meter long. Many of them have been sliced thin and carved into weird shapes due to widened roads.