URA projects should only offer homes to bona fide residents
The Urban Renewal Authority has stated that it is helping residents in old districts to improve their living conditions and that this has always been a priority.
The hypocrisy of this is ever more open to question when your paper reports that groups of cashed-up mainland buyers are being brought to Hong Kong on expenses-paid junkets to view, among other developments, the URA/New World Hanoi Road redevelopment, aka The Masterpiece, in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Your report also mentions Sino Group organising its own tours of 'mainland big spenders', no doubt to another URA development, the Vista in Sham Shui Po ('Property firms lure mainland big spenders', October 1).
So there it is in black and white.
Hong Kong people are being forced out of old districts through compulsory purchase orders to promote the government's investment immigration scheme.
Although Hong Kong is awash with cash but in urgent need of expertise, rather than attract talented visionaries to our city the administration is only interested in granting residency to anyone with HK$6.5 million to invest, however dubious the origins of this capital.
While private developers are free to market their developments to whomever they wish, in order to fulfil its mandate, URA developments should be reserved for bona fide Hong Kong residents.
Could the URA therefore advise the public how it can justify removing Hong Kong people from their own properties in order to provide investment opportunities for non-residents?
When are our Legco representatives, particularly those who are or have been URA board members, going to demand that the URA fulfil its role in improving housing for Hong Kong citizens instead of supporting a property bubble fuelled by hot money?
There is currently no system in place to monitor the URA.
Its website provides merely a brief outline of the size of its developments with no background information.
Its accounts have no breakdown of income and expenditure so there is no clear picture of the sums involved in each project.
The URA continues to bleat on about being forced to make certain decisions because it has to be self-financing.
Strangely enough developers involved in URA projects all make mega bucks on them - just check New World's press releases on sales at The Masterpiece.
So if the developers are making money but URA is not then it most either be incompetent or ceding too many favours to developers.
Mary Melville, Tsim Sha Tsui
