Subdivided flat tenants could be rehoused
This administration has avoided getting the housing authorities to take immediate and direct action to stop the upward spiral of property prices and rents. It has instead got the monetary authorities to take indirect action, making it harder to borrow (“
Hong Kong home prices hit record high in April”, June 1).
Likewise it has avoided taking immediate action to move the occupants out of the hellholes called subdivided flats, by diverting attention to the new flats that will be put on the market a few years later – pointing to the two birds in the bush to put off the trouble of getting one bird in hand.
The living conditions in these subdivided flats are a more serious health hazard than can be gauged from Suki Lee’s brief description in her letter (“
Subdivided flats are no place to live”, June 4). I am sure those caring lawmakers who have gone to experience at first-hand these apartments, could testify to the awful conditions.
They are more crowded and with worse ventilation than the resettlement blocks for the hillside squatters in the early 1950s. Although the intentions were good when they were built, these blocks turned out to be hotbeds for contagious diseases transmitted through rodents and pests infesting the premises.
Ms Lee pointed out the difficulty faced by officials who want to check these subdivided flats in gaining access without the occupants’ consent.
What has to be done is something like the action taken by
Anson Chan Fang On-sang in 1986, when she was director of social welfare. She ordered the forced removal of a five-year-old girl from her mentally unstable mother.
