It’s quicker to get public housing than to be buried in Hong Kong ... and four-year average niche wait will get worse

Better town planning will be needed to meet the burial space needs of a rapidly greying population, according to a fifth-generation proprietor of one of Hong Kong’s oldest funeral businesses.

In the worst-case scenario, the city could face a shortage of 400,000 urn spaces by 2023 if nothing is done, warns Kenneth Leung Ka-keung of the 78-year-old family-owned Leung Chun Woon Kee.

“The government doesn’t have a plan after 2022,” said Leung. “We are very concerned about the future shortage and imbalance of urn spaces. At an average wait time of four years it takes longer for people to wait for niches than a public housing flat.”

In 2010, the government had pledged to add 450,000 new public niches across the city’s 18 districts by 2022. But Leung pointed out that only 2,540 new niches had been built as of last year.

No new niches will hit the market this year or next. A stock of 855 will arrive in 2018 at Happy Valley Cemetery, but 160,000 planned niches in Tuen Mun and 20,000 in Kwai Tsing will not be ready until 2019 at the earliest.

The private sector will not be able to fill the gap. The supply of urn spaces in the private sector will have grown from 25,800 spaces in 2011 to 72,000 by next year ­– an increase roughly equivalent to the annual demand for cremations. But pressure from the dire shortage in the public sector was pushing demand and prices up steeply at private facilities.

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