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Tenants facing displacement from their Shek Kip Mei private estate prefer that their developer donate the site to the government, rather than retain it for redevelopment, so they can be resettled in public rental flats.
About 1,300 households on Tai Hang Sai Estate will be uprooted when their developer, the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation, goes about turning the site into subsidised homes for young people to buy.
But Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying reiterated the administration's stance yesterday that it would not step in to find new homes for them.
Leung spoke a day after his housing minister, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, made a similar statement.
"Tai Hang Sai Estate is not a public housing estate," Leung told Commercial Radio.
"It belongs to the corporation. It would be more flexible for NGOs such as this and the Housing Society to resettle residents and meet their needs."
Tai Hang Sai, built in 1965, is the city's only privately run estate offering low-income tenants homes at below-market rents.
The residents' worries over their future stem from the corporation's plan, announced last week, to redevelop the estate into 5,000 cheap flats for the young. They are unlikely to be offered cheap leasing alternatives from the corporation, a non-profit private firm.
Their hopes for public rental housing might have been realised had the government accepted the donation of their estate, as offered by one of the corporation's directors, Henderson Land Development chairman Lee Shau-kee, to build Home Ownership Scheme flats.
Lee had in June merely floated the idea of donating "a Shek Kip Mei site" - but on Thursday, he said the corporation would redevelop Tai Hang Sai itself, though he conceded the biggest problem would be to resettle the roughly 1,300 families.
"We appreciate [Lee's nickname] Uncle Four's aim to help young people," said Au Yeung Kit-chun, a 23-year tenant who is also chairwoman of the residents' concern group. "But shouldn't he also take care of us residents? Why doesn't he just deliver [on] his pledge and donate the site to the government?"
The group said it would be ideal if the corporation handed the site to the government, as Lee had hinted at, to avoid any problem in using public resources to help the estate's tenants.
On Friday, Cheung said the government would not shoulder resettlement responsibility of private redevelopment projects.
Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood vice-chairman Tam Kwok-kiu, who is helping the group, said: "It seems the government is reluctant to receive land donations. We don't understand why."
Alternatively, he said, the corporation could donate the site to the society, also non-profit. "The Housing Society can then buy public-housing flats in the district from the Housing Authority for residents to move in."


Tenants facing displacement hope developer donates site to government

Au Yeung Kit-chun, a resident of Tai Hang Sai Estate, is anxious about resettlement. Photo: David Wong

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Hong Kong

Residents say if site is given to government, it paves way for public rental resettlement


Tenants facing displacement from their Shek Kip Mei private estate prefer that their developer donate the site to the government, rather than retain it for redevelopment, so they can be resettled in public rental flats.


Tenants facing displacement hope developer donates site to government

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Residents say if site is given to government, it paves way for public rental resettlement

Residents say if site is given to government, it paves way for public rental resettlement