For now, there’s no shame in Hong Kong being a ‘city of public housing’

The Centa-City Leading Index, a gauge of the secondary housing market, hit a record high last week, having risen for over 20 months in succession. Around a month after Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced six new measures to address the housing crisis, thousands of people queued up outside the sales venue of a new private housing estate in Yuen Long for a chance to buy one of the 328 flats on offer, at a minimum of around HK$4 million.

This is solid proof of the ineffectiveness of Lam’s new measures and the consultation on land supply. Even the proposed vacancy tax on unsold newly built flats has not dampened property prices.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has only taken half a leaf out of other countries’ books. A vacancy tax has been effective in Vancouver because the tax does not only apply to new flats, but all homes except principal residences or homes rented for at least six months of the year. All homeowners are required to submit a declaration to qualify for the exemption. This is the right way to tackle the housing problem. If not, developers will use loopholes to escape the vacancy tax.

Amid this, Ronny Tong Ka-wah, an Executive Council member, has picked a fight with Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, chairman of the government-appointed Task Force on Land Supply. Tong slammed the task force for putting too much focus on public housing, saying “nobody wants Hong Kong to become a city of public housing”.

In response, Wong pointed out that the government’s long-term housing plan aims to build 280,000 public housing units in the next 10 years and that currently the city is still short of around 30,000 flats.