Use stamp duty windfall for those priced out of property market
Albert Cheng says the administration could use the hefty increase in revenue to speed up public housing construction and as a rent subsidy
The inflow of hot money in recent years has fuelled speculation in the local property market, pushing up prices and making it impossible for many Hongkongers to get on the ladder.
As a result, a lot of these people are forced to pay high rents or live in undesirable and unsafe conditions, including in subdivided flats. To most young people nowadays, owning their own home one day is an unattainable dream.
To solve our housing problem, the Housing Authority needs to speed up plans to build more public housing flats. In the past, the authority used the money it made from the sale of Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats to fund the construction of public flats.
The authority has plans to restart the HOS in 2016, but, still, like the Chinese saying goes, "you cannot fight a fire with water from far away". The issue needs to be tackled now.
The government is not expected to meet the target of building 15,000 public housing flats annually over the next five years. In fact, it is likely to try to abort the programme by saying there's a shortage of funds.
That way, it wouldn't have to shoulder responsibility for Hong Kong's housing problem and could allow rich and powerful private property developers to monopolise the market.