No easy fixes in sight to Hong Kong’s housing woes
HONG KONG — Strike up a conversation about housing and soaring property prices in Hong Kong, and one is sure to receive an animated response.
“Hong Kong is such an advanced society but we have people living in coffin cubicles and subdivisions. This is a disgrace! Even other countries are laughing at us,” a mini bus driver in his 60s, who only wanted to be known as Mr Chan, told TODAY.
When asked what was the one thing she hoped the new Carrie Lam administration could achieve, a receptionist in her 60s, who only wanted to be known as Ann, said: “I hope the government can buck up, especially on the price of housing.”
“Young people find it very hard to buy their own place, because the prices are just too high. For people with average income, there is no way they can cope with the housing prices right now,” she added.
Ms Charmaine Ho, 25, a social media editor added: “(I wish for) affordable housing for locals. With that, we can stop worrying about spending the majority of our monthly pay on housing and have more time to create value for our home town”.
A typical apartment in the former British colony now costs 18 times the annual median salary, making it the least affordable housing market in the world by far, according to a Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.
Despite repeated promises to tackle the issue, the government seems to have made little headway.
New Chief Executive Carrie Lam has pledged to make the housing issue a top priority during her tenure.
The underlying problem is limited supply. Land disputes have nearly halted plans to build big residential areas in the rural sections of northern Hong Kong.
Under a policy dating from the colonial era, families in traditional villages there are awarded long-term grants of land, producing suburban sprawl and making it difficult to put together a large parcel for development.
Money from the mainland has also been flowing in, driving up prices.
Plans to build elsewhere have stalled. Efforts to rezone the fringes of country parks for apartment buildings have been blocked by environmentalists, while the government has baulked at the cost of proposals by developers to subsidise land reclamation and build artificial islands.
And young people are bearing the brunt of this.
Hong Kongers that TODAY spoke to said that for young couple looking to buy their own home, many of them will have to fork out at least HK$4 million (S$707,000) for a resale private apartment averaging 40 square metres in size. A new unit costs HK$5 million upwards.
Those who cannot cope with the skyrocketing prices may have to resort to renting a subdivided room - some only big enough to fit a bed - at around HK$7,000 a month.
According to 2015 government statistics, almost 200,000 people were living in 88,000 subdivided flats.
“For young people, if they don’t earn enough to buy their own apartments or move out, all they can do is to be ‘fillial’ and continue staying with their parents,” said Mr Lai, a taxi driver, in jest.
“The apartments in Hong Kong are so small that people don’t even have space to put their things. Everything has to go into self storage rentals... I see on television how public housing in Singapore looks like, they are very spacious over there,” he added.
There is an option to apply for public housing units, where the size is usually between 30 and 60 square metres.
But there is an intricate quota and points system to navigate, with priority given to families and the elderly.
The city’s Housing Authority said in February that the average waiting time to get a public housing unit is just over four years and eight months.
Ms Alice Mak, a lawmaker with the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions said in an interview that the city’s first post-handover Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had attempted to address the issue, by pledging to build 85,000 public housing units every year.
“I am sorry to say that the second Chief Executive (Donald Tsang) did nothing apart from introducing a minimum wage for the people... The housing problem worsened. In fact, he invented the problem. The number of houses built during his term is the lowest in the last 20 years,” the pro-establishment lawmaker stated.
Ms Mak said that Mr Leung Chun-ying - who is Mrs Lam’s predecessor - merely inherited the problem from Tsang.
Mr Holden Chow, Vice Chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) said in an interview that under Mr Leung, the government tried its best to boost housing supply.
“The government sought many different areas for major or future housing supply to serve future demand. But of course it takes time to build new housing,” he said.
Mr Chow, who is also a pro-establishment lawmaker highlighted that there was a proposal to build a new artificial island next to Lantau that could house up to 70,000 people, but this was resisted by the opposition on environmental grounds.
Others argue that it is a matter of political will.
“The government can easily set a target. Let’s say they set a target in three years’ time, housing prices should be halved. Just by lip service alone, the price will drop,” said Mr Albert Lai, the policy committee convener of The Professional Commons think tank in Hong Kong.
“Are they willing to set this target? They won’t because of vested interests. Despite all the talk of controlling housing prices or releasing more hand for housing, they are not doing it,” said the former vice chairman of the opposition Civic Party. Mr Lai asserted that there is actually sufficient government-owned vacant land that can be utilised.
Mr Lierence Li, a public relations professional in his 30s, said: “The government should see how they can find more land either by reclamation or collecting the land from the New Territories… Otherwise, the youth will complain about housing and the society becomes less stable”.
“There are so many voices (on how to tackle the problem). Some want to preserve the environment, while others say the surrounding should be more green... We can reclaim land, but people talk about saving the fishes... Do we really need that many country parks?” Mr Chan, the mini bus driver asked rhetorically.
“Think about this, now people don’t even have houses to live in, so let’s be practical.”
http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/china/no-easy-solutions-hong-kongs-housing-woes
The housing situation in HK is really crazy.
