Debate over where Hong Kong's public rental housing should be located has been long and heated, so it comes as welcome relief that government officials are finally formulating a policy. Whatever their agreed approach, it will be controversial: this is an issue of economics versus social good and there are strong arguments on both sides.
Property developers contend that prime sites, such as those with sea views or in central locations, should be sold at auction to the highest bidder rather than be used to build subsidised flats. Groups backing tenants believe that this approach widens the social gap between the rich and poor and consigns the less wealthy in society to substandard living environments. There is also the view that mixed development is preferable, and that a percentage of new private housing projects should be ear-marked for public rental.
In essence, the arguments are that prime sites should either be put to their best economic use or become part of a government policy of social harmony.
That there has been no firm policy is surprising; half of Hong Kong's population lives in low-rent, government-built flats. The first were built 52 years ago in the wake of a fire that swept through a squatter area in Shek Kip Mei on Christmas Day 1953, leaving 53,000 mainlanders who had fled communist rule homeless.
Hundreds of thousands of flats have since been built under housing programmes, with blocks and estates located wherever was considered suitable. Generally, they were on the periphery of urban areas where bigger parcels of land were available in what were then considered comparatively remote locations.
Hong Kong's growth has meant many older estates now occupy prime urban land - those in Kwun Tong built in the 1950s and Wong Tai Sin in the 1960s, for example, may once have been considered in far-flung locations but are now on sites worth billions of dollars. Even those in the new towns of the New Territories, such as at Tuen Mun, are not as remote as they once appeared because of the commercial developments that have sprung up around them and the transport networks that have developed to serve residents.