Mike Rowse

Opinion | Hong Kong doesn’t just need more housing, it must also find more ways to turn renters into owners

The government’s backing for Lantau Tomorrow, reaffirmed in the budget speech, is a pragmatic solution to increasing the housing supply. At the same time, the home ownership rate must be boosted to give more people a stake in society

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Hongkongers apply to buy government-subsidised flats available for sale at three housing estates in Choi Hung and Mui Wo in April 2017. Boosting home ownership levels in Hong Kong is a positive step towards narrowing the wealth gap. Photo: Felix Wong

Mike Rowse

Published: 9:00am, 9 Mar 2020Updated: 9:00am, 9 Mar 2020

All the while I have lived in Hong Kong, the price and availability of residential accommodation have been burning issues. Governments come and go, but none seem able to solve the problem of how to put a reasonably priced roof over everyone’s head. As far as newspaper columnists searching for a topic are concerned, this subject just keeps on giving.

In the final year of the British administration, I recall, there was a performance pledge attached to the budget to provide 425,000 housing units over five years. That promise sailed away with the Royal Yacht Britannia.

The first SAR government picked up the idea and turned it into a much more exciting “85,000 flats per year” headliner. The stated aim was to move progressively towards home ownership of 70 per cent. However, after the East Asian economic crisis engineered a crash in property prices, that policy platform (unfairly) got the blame and the programme came to a crashing halt.

So here we all are many years later. We still have the same problem and the same choice of solutions: either use statutory powers to resume large areas of agricultural land in the New Territories to develop new towns, or engage in large-scale reclamation.

The decision to set aside significant sums in the 2020 budget to keep alive the dream of Lantau Tomorrow suggests the government has concluded that the first option is politically too difficult, so the second is the way to go. Reluctantly, I reached the same conclusion a while back.

If the chief executive and legislature had been elected by universal suffrage, the government would have the mandate to face down the Heung Yee Kuk and the property developers who, between them, control most of the land in question. But we are quite some way from the political reform necessary to achieve a strong popular government. So East Lantau Metropolis, here we come.