Inside Out | Hong Kong must tackle abuse of colonial-era policy on homes in its villages to sort out housing shortage
The small-house policy, which has for the past five decades shaped the lives of all of Hong Kong’s 700,000 traditional villagers, was originally intended to be an ‘interim measure’
It took Dennis Bray, the then colonial Hong Kong government’s district commissioner for the New Territories, six frenzied weeks in 1972 to draft the small-house policy that has for the past five decades shaped the lives of all of Hong Kong’s 700,000 traditional villagers.
Cynics say he was buying off powerful traditional village lobbies as the government sought to avoid confrontation while it acquired land to build Hong Kong’s new towns. Sympathisers say he was justifiably trying to stabilise our many clan villages and the traditional Hong Kong village life that sits at the heart of Hong Kong’s centuries-old heritage.
Nevertheless, the well-meaning district commissioner will surely be turning in his grave to see the unintended consequences of a policy he always saw as temporary. “I should emphasise that I do not see these measures as anything more than interim measures,” he said at the time.
Tell that to Carrie Lam, who turned in her Policy Address last week to tackle some of Hong Kong’s most enduring and intractable policy problems, but as far as the small-house policy is concerned, kicked the can down the road.
How can it be that a policy so explicitly temporary is still totally untouchable 46 years later, despite being the source of abuse and corruption; allowing shoddy building standards; discriminating against women (and the urban Hong Kong majority who fight over smaller and smaller housing units); and allowing chaotic development without proper planning for roads, sewerage, gas supplies and even – sometimes – water? And do not forget the wastefully inefficient use of land at a time when the government is struggling to find 1,200 hectares to improve the housing plight of urban Hongkongers.