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Richard Wong
Richard Wong Yue-chim is the Philip Wong Kennedy Wong Professor in Political Economy at the University of Hong Kong
Families owning a home under the Tenants Purchase Scheme have lower divorce and single parent rates and more people living in the same unit than those renting public housing, thus reducing the pressure on the city’s housing stock.
The Tenants Purchase Scheme has had a curious effect on Hong Kong’s labour market. Renters, instead of homeowners, have higher jobless rates, probably to avoid the penalty for being well-off tenants. Here is one way to fix the problem.
Youths from low-income, single-parent households are doubly disadvantaged by having no access to the career leg-up the missing parent, usually the father, can give. In such cases, business and the government should take the lead.
Removing the elderly from the calculation of Hong Kong’s poverty line would more accurately reflect poverty among the working-age population. This would allow for more targeted poverty alleviation measures for both groups, one based on consumption expenditure and the other on income
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Richard Wong says as the most valuable forms of capital are increasingly intangible and with giant firms dominating intangible-capital industries, the challenge of the future will be how to ensure that growth is inclusive.
Ideas and innovation have become a new form of capital that cannot be seen but whose scalability enables companies to increase their bottom lines.
The hidden free lunch in Hong Kong’s housing market is the space that could be freed up if public housing renters and subsidised housing owners were allowed to lease out their flats.
The chief executive has earned some comparisons to Singapore’s public housing scheme for her proposed reforms, but one key improvement is missing and should be made – to give Hong Kong home owners better access to the transfer value of the flat.
The menu of options proposed by the government’s task force to solve our housing crisis is missing an overall strategy for the city’s future development. Taking that into consideration, we should focus on Lantau and New Territories development.
Allowing public housing to dominate in Hong Kong has a detrimental effect on economic prosperity, social cohesion and political inclusiveness and should not be our ultimate goal.
A plan to let public tenants buy their flats could succeed if the prospective owner has a realistic chance of paying off the loan, and can reap the full capital appreciation of the property.
Unleashing market forces within the public housing sector would mean a step towards privatising the public housing stock and refocusing public housing away from handouts and towards ownership
Burdened with an ageing workforce, we need to invest heavily in enhancing the human capital of residents, and do more to attract newcomers who possess talent and know-how
Homes offered through Hong Kong’s welfare housing programme are getting bigger, while units offered through private development are shrinking. We need to reel back these distortions
