Ryan IpandIris Poon

Opinion | Hong Kong must cut the red tape and start churning out public housing to tackle the acute shortage of homes

At the crux of delays is a lack of transparency. An official one-stop platform disclosing the progress of each public housing project would allow government bureaus to be held accountable, and development timelines to be better respected

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Yue Kwong Chuen in Aberdeen, one of the oldest public housing estates in the city, is about to be redeveloped. Photo: Nora Tam

Ryan IpandIris Poon

Published: 6:30am, 16 May 2020Updated: 10:34am, 16 May 2020

Public housing is an important part of Hong Kong’s social welfare net. But development delays have taken a toll on the supply of public housing, pushing the queue for public rental housing to a record high and spawning an overwhelming demand for Home Ownership Scheme flats.

Our Hong Kong Foundation recently published a report titled “Cutting Red Tape to Catch Up with Shortfalls in Land and Housing Supply”. It warns of the severe undersupply in public housing. Over the past seven years, a deficit of some 82,600 units has been accumulated if we compare completions against the Long Term Housing Strategy’s production target.

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To make matters worse, a further shortfall of 66,000 units is likely in the next decade. It is estimated that the average waiting time for a public rental housing flat will soon surpass six years, double what the government used to promise.

To add to the complexity of the problem, many public housing sites face hurdles before they can get to the “spade ready” point. Three such cases were scrutinised in the report. They illustrate how housing projects often do not proceed smoothly beyond the stage of rezoning, due to delays in procedures, including facility and land clearance, land resumption and engineering studies.

The first case is a site at the junction of Sung Wong Toi Road and To Kwa Wan Road in Ma Tau Kok. The original site plan was for 600 public housing units. This was later replaced by a plan for 100 units of transitional housing, after a small part of the site was not vacated on time.

The facility, used as an animal management centre by another government department, could only be moved out in 2023 due to a shortage of nearby relocation options. The site’s meandering timeline highlighted a seeming lack of coordination and common mandate among government departments on the land clearance schedule.