Mind the Gap | Hong Kong people can find solutions for the mess they created in housing and wealth gap

Hong Kong’s new 30-member Task Force on Land Supply appointed by the government could be a predictable farce in the making, because it will chase the usual ineffective solutions by refusing to confront the true, controversial problems of what ails the city’s housing and property.

The word “Supply” suggests they will not be challenging the demand-side problems. The task force is made up of urban planning professionals and representatives from social housing, environment, economics and politics. It has excluded the big developers, pro-democracy politicians and activists. But, the business establishment is well represented by the Our Hong Kong Foundation. It fails to include dissenting and critical development voices like Paul Zimmerman. The entire public consultation will be biased towards releasing more land into a dysfunctional land policy and development cartel.

In fact, members are already discussing the development of country parks. As the task force’s title suggests, they are far too concentrated on land supply. Instead they should be called and mandated as a “supply and demand” task force. Without addressing how property is developed and sold, they will never have enough flats for locals.

Both public and private flat development desperately need reform at the sales and demand levels. The issue is not technical or land planning, but political.

The first decision this task force must agree upon is whether or not they believe property is a strategic resource necessary for the stability and long term economic development of Hong Kong. Or whether we should stick to the past where land supply is simply raw material for a small number of tycoons to exploit and the government is merely a toll booth.

Here some examples of what the Task Force will most certainly not recommend, that they would call blasphemous for a free market.