Opinion | Housing subsidy U-turn shows up government inconsistency
Albert Cheng says instead of tying themselves in knots to justify it, officials should look to redevelop subdivided industrial buildings
In July, the Commission on Poverty approved extending handouts to inadequately housed residents through the Community Care Fund. Benefactors include those who live in subdivided private flats, squatter huts, and the homeless. The government said money would not go to those in subdivided industrial buildings.
Then, after pressure groups and residents in subdivided industrial units protested, the government changed its mind and included them as well. In total, an estimated 78,700 families, or 210,000 people, will benefit.
The benefactors are mainly those who receive no public housing subsidies or welfare benefits. To extend a one-off handout to them is more than reasonable and also fits the purpose of the Community Care Fund.
Handing out allowances shows a blatant disregard of the law and for tenants’ safety
But extending it to tenants of illegally subdivided industrial buildings has created another problem. As the government forbids the use of industrial buildings for residential purposes, handing out allowances would be tantamount to the government breaking the law. It would render the law ineffective.
On the face of it, the allowance would appear to be a subsidy to these illegally subdivided industrial building units. This might encourage more owners of industrial buildings to subdivide their properties to feed market demand in order to reap profits. It would worsen the problem of illegally converted units in industrial buildings, which can be a fire hazard.
The Commission on Poverty, headed by Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, has refused to reconsider the implications of extending the allowance to these illegal tenants.
And Dr Law Chi-kwong, chairman of the executive committee of the Community Care Fund, who is in charge of the project, came up with some twisted logic to defend the government's stance. He said legal advice specified that tenants of these subdivided units could not be said to have broken the law until the owner of the unit had been notified of its illegal status. With this logic, he insisted that the government is certainly not encouraging illegal activities.
Furthermore, he said that even if these units were found to be illegal, the onus would be on owners alone, not the tenants. Hence, handing out allowances would not be affected.