Opinion | Why Hong Kong is no Singapore when it comes to housing and will struggle to catch up

The first overseas trip made by Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor after she took over as chief executive was a visit to Singapore. Although often viewed as rival economies, Hong Kong and Singapore face many common problems – language and identity, nation building, economic restructuring, wealth disparity and, last but not least, decent and affordable housing for its people.

After the second world war, both Hong Kong and Singapore faced severe housing shortages owing to rapid population increase or wartime damage. In Hong Kong, after a fire broke out in the Shek Kip Mei squatter area in December 1953, more than 50,000 people were left homeless. The colonial government quickly established a resettlement department to rehouse the homeless in seven-storey resettlement estates designed to meet their basic needs. Inhabitants had to cook and wash themselves in common areas.

As Hong Kong’s industrialisation gathered pace, the government started to build low-cost public rental housing for low-income families and satellite towns in the New Territories to make room for flatted factory buildings in the urban areas.

It was not until the arrival of Sir Murray MacLehose as governor in 1971 that the government promulgated a new vision of housing for the people. The Housing Authority was established under the Housing Ordinance in 1973, signalling the government’s long-term commitment to providing decent, affordable housing for the people, not just resettlement for squatters or fire victims. In the late 1970s, the government took a major step forward by helping low-income families to own homes by launching the first Home Ownership Scheme.