Alice Wu

Opinion | New governance style? Carrie Lam can’t even get basic policymaking right, as the abject failure of the spare room letting scheme shows

The take-up rate of the letting scheme for subsidised flats in Hong Kong has been outrageously low, with only 13 of 13,000 eligible owners signing up. Did the government pull the policy out of thin air, instead of doing research and evaluation?

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Yue Kwong Chuen, a Housing Society estate in Aberdeen. The take-up rate of a scheme that allows 13,000 owners of Housing Society subsidised flats to rent out spare rooms has been dismal. How was the policy formulated? Photo: Felix Wong

Alice Wu

Published: 9:15am, 27 May 2019Updated: 9:15am, 27 May 2019

We’ve become so used to how inaccurate the Hong Kong government is when it comes to budget surpluses that it’s a total joke, really. But no one laughs because it’s a bad, cruel joke: all that money – HK$1.17 trillion, as of March 31, 2019, stockpiled in fiscal reserves – yet, residents of this uber-rich city continue to suffer in an increasingly harsh living environment.

So when Deutsche Bank’s latest worldwide quality of life survey places Hong Kong 44th out of 56 cities – far below Tokyo, at 14th, and Singapore, 23rd – we can’t honestly say we are surprised.

But instead of looking on as this administration fumbles its policies big and small, we must look into how policymakers’ chronic inaccuracy has resulted in their failure to do the basic work of policymaking.

A striking example of the government’s dereliction of duty is the “Letting Scheme for Subsidised Sale Developments with Premium Unpaid”, which allows 13,000 owners of Housing Society subsidised flats to rent spare rooms to needy families.

The scheme was a special measure announced by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in her policy address in October 2017. Since its launch in September 2018, only 13 landlord and 53 tenant applications have been submitted. Five of the landlord and 22 of the tenant applications have been approved, but not a single tenant applicant has been matched to a landlord.

The response is so shockingly dismal – 13 out of 13,000 eligible owners is 0.1 per cent – that we must question how the policy was formulated, and whether there was even a process.