Lam aims to ease HK housing woes
Leader’s policy address focuses on property ownership and welfare
HONG KONG: Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam began her highly anticipated third Policy Address via video after she was prevented from speaking as she was repeatedly heckled inside and outside the Legislative Council (LegCo) chamber.
Shortly before 11.30am, LegCo President Andrew Leung adjourned the meeting as Lam left the chamber yesterday.
The LegCo meeting was suspended within minutes of convening at 11am after three pan-democrats were ordered to leave the chamber.
Regretting the circumstances that prevented her from speaking at the LegCo, Lam began her speech by urging calm in Hong Kong and with an appeal to creating an environment of mutual respect and trust in the city.
Noting that 220 policy initiatives had been taken by her government to improve the people, she acknowledged housing remained the most serious issue that her government must tackle.
The highlights for her speech included reducing waiting times for public housing access, making it easier for first-time buyers to get mortgages on properties and increasing land supply through compulsory purchases and land reclamation.
For housing, Lam said the government-backed Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation will relax the ceiling of mortgage financing schemes for first-home buyers.
For those who are allowed to borrow up to 90% of the value of the flat, the lending cap is raised to HK$8mil (RM4.2mil) from the existing HK$6mil (RM3.2).
The cap is raised to HK$10mil (RM5.3) from HK$6mil for potential home owners able to take mortgages worth up to 80% of the value.
Lam pledged to regularise the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme to provide subsidised sale flats that specifically cater for public rental housing tenants.
She also pledged to regularise the White Form Secondary Market Scheme and increased the quota gradually to enable middle-income families to become homeowners.
Lam also proposed starter homes (SH) targeted at Hong Kong residents who are young professionals and converted the private residential project of the Urban Renewal Authority at Ma Tau Wai Road into an SH Pilot Project for sale.
The government will also levy “special rates” on vacant first-hand private residential units to discourage hoarding.
In a significant move, the government proposes to delink the selling prices of flats under the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) from the market prices of private residential properties, and adopting the affordability of applicants as the basis while ensuring that at least 75% (up from 50%) of the number of HOS flats for sale are affordable.
“I hereby set a clear objective that every Hong Kong citizen and his family will no longer have to be troubled by or pre-occupied with the housing problem, and that they will be able to have their own home in Hong Kong, a city in which we all have a share,” said the chief executive.
Lam also said recurrent spending on welfare and health care increased by 29% in the past two years, amounting to HK$164.9bil (RM88bil) in the 2019-20 estimates.
According to Lam, service places for On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services will be increased by 1,000 each year over the next three school years to bring the total number to 10,000 as pledged before.
Also, the government plans to widen its after-school care programme with a host of new measures, including adding 2,500 full fee-waiving places. Lam said the pro-child policies are expected to benefit more than 5,700 students and their families.
Starting 2020/21 school year, an annual grant of HK$2,500 (RM1,334) for each student will be regularised, benefiting about 900,000 students in Hong Kong.
Also, the government plans to transform more than 170 public leisure areas to make them more people-friendly.
The support under the Public Transport Fare Subsidy will raised from one-fourth to one-third of the monthly public transport expenses in excess of HK$400, as well as raising the subsidy cap from the existing level of HK$300 (RM160) to HK$400 (RM213) per month.
Fees on government-owned tunnels will also be waived to ease the public’s transport cost burden and the cover of government subsidies will be widened to include eight outlying island ferry routes in addition to the current six.