What’s the point of temporary housing if it still takes years and millions to build?
- Kai Tak protest highlights the challenges of the ‘light public housing’ project, which is now neither cheap nor quick
- Far better to repurpose decommissioned quarantine units, which are also modular, and focus on the real mission – permanent public housing
Twenty-five years after the last flight took off from Kai Tak, the area is again generating the noisiest sound bite in town.
Regardless of the validity of their claims, for lack of better words, the protesting residents simply do not aspire to be part of a social melting pot. The government has tried hard to motivate a new Hong Kong spirit, but these residents are not ready to share their neighbourhood with people on low incomes.
But if she located all 30,000 proposed temporary housing units outside the urban core, she would be criticised for marginalising the poor working-class and low-income families. If she borrowed vacant sites from developers, she would be mischaracterised as colluding with the private sector.
And if she had not included Kai Tak, critics could have questioned why, given the mega development, she could not find a small piece of unsold land for social good. Location-wise, Ho faces a lose-lose situation.
As a former director of the Architectural Services Department, Ho should know better than most the benefits of modular construction, especially when her promotion was very much built on putting up quarantine centres quickly in the battle against Covid-19.
Do these quarantine units not offer better living conditions than subdivided units or metal cages? And, is it not more economical and faster to retrofit these units, especially if this is all on a temporary basis?
A year ago, then-chief secretary John Lee Ka-chiu hailed the seven-day construction of the Tsing Yi isolation centre as “miraculous”. Ho could pull off another miracle if she can inspire architects, engineers and contractors to design beautiful structures and connecting architecture to accommodate the existing modules. Modular construction does not have to look anything like the infamous Penny’s Bay quarantine centre.
Although Ho might fall short of taking care of 100,000 families, the repurposed buildings would be sustainable, cost-effective and take much less than two years to home many struggling families.
With the first phase of funding approved by Legco, the construction of temporary housing at Kai Tak, at a premium price, is imminent. Ho’s bigger mission, which she should have focused on from the start, should be building high-quality permanent public housing, which would bring a long-lasting positive impact for the people of Hong Kong.
Good design can lift a property, a neighbourhood and build a sense of belonging. As we relaunch Hong Kong, we should also rebrand public housing, which does not have to be boring and built to cookie-cutter standards – exemplified by a typical floor plan that is as uninspiringly displayed as the Housing Authority logo.
Ho should not forget her roots. Architecture can help solve social problems, and reimagining public housing could encourage a giant leap towards the social equality we have been longing for.
Dennis Lee is a Hong Kong-born, America-licensed architect with years of design experience in the US and China