Opinion | How Hong Kong’s housing crisis can be solved by thinking like Donald Trump

If only our leaders would dare take a page out of US President Donald Trump’s book by doing the unimaginable. Pure insanity now rules our property market. Only doing the unthinkable can cure this madness. Slam shut our housing market door to all except Hong Kong identity card holders. Home prices will drop faster than a ton of bricks. But it takes Trump-like guts. 

The only person who can make that happen is Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. From what I hear, she keeps her ministers on a short leash. What she says goes on policy matters. That’s not unlike Trump’s style. But Trump dares do the unimaginable. Does Lam?

Threatening North Korea with fire and fury, starting a trade war with China, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, giving the middle finger to other G7 leaders – Trump did all that after only 18 months in office. Now he’s done the unthinkable: meeting and convincing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to denuclearise.

Trump calls his brinkmanship putting America first. Dare Lam put Hong Kong first? Our housing crisis is akin to a lit fuse inching towards a bomb made up of 200,000 people in subdivided flats, 300,000 who must wait over four years for public housing, and countless Hongkongers whose dream of home ownership has vanished.

Forget about country parks, reclamation, brownfield sites and the Fanling golf course. Even if there is a consensus on how to create more land, homes won’t become available for years. Does our government want people to languish in cubicle homes indefinitely? Are those queuing for public housing expected to shrug off the fact they could die while waiting?