LettersHong Kong housing crisis: can deadlock over small-house policy be broken?

Name: Hong Kong cage home resident finds space too small for self-quarantine amid coronavirus outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-04-01T22:30:17.000Z
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Any open discussion on the villagers’ ‘privileges’ – in the eyes of the general public –could ignite conflict between city and village

However, the chronic controversy relating to indigenous villagers’ rights and interests should be reviewed and resolved

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Villagers attend a rally against a court ruling on small-house rights at Heung Yee Kuk Building in 2019. Appeal judges in January 2021 overturned the lower court ruling to reinstate male indigenous villagers’ full rights to build three-storey homes on both private and government-sourced land in space-starved Hong Kong. Photo: Edmond So

Letters

Published: 6:30am, 2 Apr 2021Updated: 6:30am, 2 Apr 2021

I refer to the Heung Yee Kuk and the interpretation of indigenous inhabitants’ traditional rights laid down in Article 40 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, especially the rights of those who can build small houses – ding uk – on private land, usually ruined farmland, under the small-house policy of 1972.

The ding uk originated in a good policy that allowed indigenous males to have their own houses of up to three storeys, with several exemptions from the Buildings Ordinance and related requirements. Such an arrangement helps the villagers save a large amount on construction expenditures. Although the villagers can only build on private land within the “environs … of a recognised village”, the number of ding uk is increasing.

The prominent controversial points in this regard are: (a) the villagers’ urge to expand the environs of the villages versus the need for construction land for public use; and (b) the continuation of villagers’ rights and interests from the colonial past versus the redefinition of the constitutional rights and identity of new Hongkongers.

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Hong Kong cage home resident finds space too small for self-quarantine amid coronavirus outbreak

Indeed, the former is a long-standing political deadlock and the latter is a conceptual dilemma that is hard to resolve. What’s more, there might be a possibility of social unrest within the rural community if their expected rights and interests are plucked away. Any open discussion on the villagers’ “privileges” – in the eyes of the general public – could ignite conflict between city and village. The constitution currently gives the villagers higher status than the rest of the public, while the holding of private land resources adds to the problem of finding land for public housing.

Comprehensive reforms to the Hong Kong electoral process have been proposed and confirmed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, with the Heung Yee Kuk retaining a say in the chief executive and Legislative Council elections. Now that this issue has been settled, the chronic controversy relating to indigenous villagers’ rights and interests should also be reviewed and resolved.

As such, setting a cut-off date for applying to build a ding uk before 2047, a mass buyout of ding rights, or the resumption of ruined farmland for a public purpose and so on, will be the next challenges for the administration.

Bruce Kwong, assistant professor, University of Macau