Focus on housing issue

Hong Kong has gone through many struggles over the past few years, first the 2019 protests, then the Covid pandemic. Recently as Hong Kong is opening up to the outside world after pursuing a near-lockdown policy, it has finally come to the task of fixing its core issue: the housing problem.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) will get a new chief executive on May 8, and the housing issue should be a priority for John Lee Ka-chiu if he wants his tenure to see any success. Lee is the sole candidate allowed by the central government in Beijing to run for chief executive; at least four other people vied for the office but lacked sufficient nominations.

The coming five years is a critical moment for Hong Kong to turn around from chaos to good governance. The housing problem expanded the discontent of Hong Kong people, triggering the 2019 protests. If it remains unresolved, it will continue to be a time bomb for the city, and protests are bound to happen again.

Hence the director of the Chinese State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, made an official declaration in July 2021 that "Hong Kong would be a vibrant city with no shortage of affordable housing by the time the nation celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2049."

Getting rid of subdivided units is a priority political mission according to Xia, not just a superficial housing or social issue. John Lee visited two grassroots families early this week to show his commitment to this mission.

Global role

Hong Kong is a global financial hub and the world's thirdlargest financial center. It is also a financial center for the Greater Bay Area of China and thus plays a strategic role for China's development in the years to come. All these facts mean that its success is important to China on the global stage.

However, for any success to happen, stability is the key, and to achieve that, people need to have affordable homes. And this has been impossible in Hong Kong in the past. The chief executives in the past four terms could not tackle shortage of affordable housing even though all of them claimed that they were concerned about it.

Housing policies shifted under different leaderships, which resulted in inconsistency. Tung Cheehwa's "85,000 flats" advocacy was terminated because of the Asian financial turmoil in 1998. Donald Tsang scaled down all public housing schemes, which turned the whole housing policy in an opposite direction.

The third chief executive, Leung Chun-ying (C Y Leung), was a veteran surveyor but his leadership style was seen as too left-wing, and so was attacked by most of the developers and politicians in Hong Kong. The social atmosphere went to extremes after the Occupy Central protests and C Y Leung could not get enough social support to reform housing policies.

The fourth chief executive, Carrie Lam, was more pragmatic than her predecessors. She set up three plans, namely Lantau Tomorrow, Northern Metropolis and streamlining the process of developing land for housing construction such as technical studies, planning permissions and land reclamation, which created too many hurdles for new housing developments.

Furthermore, she implemented a minimum living area per capita of 280 square feet (26 square meters) into the land sales contracts and tenancy control of subdivided units.

However, the fifth wave of Covid-19 and the vested interest of pro-establishment camps ruined her plan for re-election.

Still, Lam has laid a solid foundation for solutions of the shortage of affordable housing in Hong Kong. If we review the number of public housing units built by the past four chief executives as a key performance indicator, Tung Chee-hwa and Carrie Lam had the best performance in the housing aspect.

Prices too high

Hong Kong has been named the world's most expensive city in which to buy a home. The average price of a 1,000-square-foot (93square-meter) home adequate for two parents and two children in 2022 is around HK$15 million (US$1.9 million). That means HK$15,000 per square foot. For a small 200-square-foot apartment, which can only fit a double bed with a sofa, the price is around HK$6 million.

"She set up three plans, namely Lantau Tomorrow, Northern Metropolis and streamlining the process of developing land for housing construction such as technical studies, planning permissions and land reclamation, which created too many hurdles for new housing developments.”