Village revamps could put the squeeze on small-house policy

There is something about the subject of small houses that drives otherwise sane people into a form of madness. The Heung Yee Kuk claims there is a legal entitlement for certain New Territories villagers (those descended through the male line from a resident of a pre-1898 recognised village) to build a small house, and that this right is protected by the Basic Law.

In fact, while there is some evidence of a traditional practice, there is no legal entitlement, and the Basic Law makes no mention of small houses, contenting itself with a bland promise to respect 'lawful traditional rights'.

The kuk regularly complains about slow processing of building applications by the Lands Department. Yet, if the present output of about 1,000 cases a year were doubled (which is extremely unlikely) it would take 100 years to deal with all those villagers already 'eligible' (240,000 as estimated by the kuk), and 200 years if the benefit were extended to women, which under the Sex Discrimination Ordinance it should have been.

Dealing with these cases, plus the hundreds of thousands of others that would arise in the interim, would require all the land in the New Territories and large areas of Guangdong province. In other words, the policy as interpreted by some is simply incapable of implementation.

That alone is sufficient reason to take a step back and look at the origins of the policy, what it was trying to achieve, and how in practical ways we should now be seeking to achieve those objectives.

The small-house policy was devised in 1972 when there was little or no public housing in the New Territories. The idea was that residents of rural areas who wanted to stay in their villages, perhaps because they farmed nearby land, should be allowed to improve their situation by building a small house within the village environs on land they owned, or on government land which would be sold to them for the purpose. In other words, this was a matter of housing policy.