LettersAffordable housing for all Hongkongers should have been protesters’ sixth demand

From ridiculous suggestions such as building homes inside concrete water pipes or above the container terminal to a reclamation project in Tung Chung that will only be complete 20 years later, the only thing done about our housing crisis by our present and past chief executives has been to talk, seek consensus and undertake consultation about solving it. This is likely to be repeated in the October policy address.

Hong Kong has enough land to build ample affordable housing if the government would broadly invoke the Lands Resumption Ordinance and also use about 3 per cent of our country parks specifically for affordable housing, only for locals. This should have been protesters’ sixth demand, which would bring more social harmony to Hong Kong and benefit many.

What Hongkongers should be most concerned about is not being extradited to China or the lack of democratic freedom but the more than 200,000 people forced to dwell in subdivided flats. Tens of thousands of children wake up to the dark and narrow walls of these inhumane homes comparable to prison cells.

Hong Kong isn’t lacking in financial resources, with over US$1 trillion in fiscal reserves, but so many are living in abysmal conditions. We must not mistake economic freedom for allowing rich landlords or property developers to freely game the system by using housing (a necessity) as a means to enslave the needy.

Social stability, in part, can be achieved by enabling everybody to become a homeowner, thus giving everyone an added stake in society, as Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore. Some Western countries have also been pursuing a more caring, equal and humane capitalist system, such as the democratic socialist system of Scandinavian countries, which takes into consideration the needs of broader stakeholders and not just shareholders. China in many ways adopts a more redistributive system through higher taxation and socialist welfare systems.