Letters | Hong Kong housing problem needs solutions, not selfish objectors

Hong Kong is, indeed, not so much short of land as short of compromise. Everyone is making their own calculations. Thus, every single time the government seeks land, there will definitely be objections to it from someone or other.

The environmentalists say not an inch of a country park can be touched. The landlords won’t sell their land at an unattractive price. If the government was to resort to the Land Resumption Ordinance, there would be another riot, but this time by the landlords.

Again, the vested interests who live nearby surely wouldn’t want their scenic views obscured, nor the prices of their homes adversely affected by the proposed reclamation project. Even the pan-democratic legislators, before they exited the Legislative Council en masse, had vowed to sabotage the plan, saying it would empty the public coffers. Note that this same argument had been given by the Chinese government against the Hong Kong International Airport before the handover.

To bypass these objections, large swathes belonging to the government must offer a way out of the city’s housing misery and support the future development of Hong Kong. After all, Hongkongers deserve decent roofs over their heads for all their hard work. Letting people live in shoe boxes such as subdivided flats and micro or “nano” flats is absolutely inhumane. It must be kept in mind that runaway housing prices could have fuelled the now fading social unrest.

Singapore is smaller than Hong Kong but citizens there live in much larger “boxes” than us. Hopefully, the various so-called experts, who have not found feasible ways to solve the problem, will invoke their right to remain silent. Anyway, the public interest, instead of individual interests, shall prevail!