‘Punching bags’ over housing shortage? Powerful Hong Kong rural group calls for changes to sell ancestral village land to developers
- Heung Yee Kuk chief blames rigid rules for blocking release of village land for new housing
- Group also suggests easing rules so that villagers can build high-rise homes on family land
The head of the Heung Yee Kuk, Hong Kong’s rural powerhouse, is fed up that villagers in the New Territories have become a punching bag in the debate over the city’s shortage of land for housing.
Kenneth Lau Ip-keung, the pro-Beijing group’s chairman, told the Post that the government’s rigid restrictions over development of the countryside had blocked the release of more land for housing and deserved to be blamed instead.
“New Territories villagers have become the punching bag for people to vent their anger over the housing shortage. Actually, we want to develop our land but have not been allowed to do so by the government,” he said.
“It is the government that is stocking up land in the New Territories through rules that restrict the development of our land.”
Hong Kong faces a housing crisis, with some of the highest property prices in the world, a chronic shortage of land for new developments and an average waiting time of 5.8 years for a government low-rental flat.
