Subsidise families to buy homes. Make developers sell a third of new flats at subsidised prices. Build a guaranteed number of subsidised flats every year.
The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong had quite a list of ideas for inclusion in the next policy address - 145 in all. But its ideas for the property market will probably get the most attention given the wide interest in home ownership.
The ideas, presented at an hour-long meeting yesterday with Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, would help rein in property prices and make it easier for people to buy homes, the DAB believes. Tsang is consulting various groups about what to include in the policy blueprint, which he will deliver in October.
The DAB says the government should provide a subsidy to households earning less than HK$30,000 a month to help them buy their own home. Such families should be eligible for a subsidy worth around a fifth of the price of a flat. A family would have to pay back the subsidy if it sold the flat bought with it.
The subsidised flats should be relatively small, between 600 and 700 square feet, the party's spokesman on housing policy, Chan Kam-lam, said.
The party has not put a cost on the subsidy proposal.
The DAB also wants the government to make it a condition when selling land to developers that they designate a third of the flats built on it to a government-subsidy scheme. And it urged the government to revive the Home Ownership Scheme - under which the government built flats for sale at below market prices to households unable to afford homes on the private market - and to build 5,000 such flats a year.