Try to imagine this: 20 years from now, everyone who reaches retirement age will own his or her own home - no matter how little they earned during their working lives. The home could be sold to generate income in old age. Such a scheme would go a long way towards providing for an ageing population.
Now imagine the key to making this work: from now on, every household will be guaranteed a secure income, which not only meets the socially equitable minimum standard of living, but further increases with every dollar earned.
By implementing such a scheme, the government might save enough money to assure its fiscal health without imposing new or higher taxes, selling off valued assets, or going into debt.
All this and more can be achieved simply by extending Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) benefits to housing, and building a sliding scale into the benefits. At present, the needy receive housing and non-housing assistance separately. Non-housing needs are met efficiently enough by the CSSA, in cash payments covering actual needs - such as a shortfall between the recipient's income and a socially guaranteed standard of living.
The CSSA can be faulted for not having a sliding scale of benefits. In recent years, increasing numbers of full-time jobs have failed to pay subsistence-level wages. But workers who swallow their pride and apply for CSSA wage supplements can only attain the standard of living of CSSA recipients who do not work at all.
Further, the Mandatory Provident Fund is of little help to low-income workers: this is generating fears that a growing proportion of the ageing population will have to rely on public assistance after retirement.
As for housing, there is a symbiotic relationship in Hong Kong, where property is so expensive: many people require housing assistance, but the government has abundant property-related revenues. This equation has been marred, however, by inefficient housing-aid programmes. Fortunately, the least efficient of these, such as the Home Ownership Scheme and the subsidised loan programme, were discontinued in the recent past - made unnecessary by falling home prices.