My Take | Public housing issue a symptom of larger HK government failure
- The recovery of some 5,000 flats from well-off tenants in just two years was likely due to Beijing’s pressure rather than John Lee’s decisiveness
The figures are so shocking you can hardly find a more stunning indictment of the failure of successive administrations when it comes to the government’s housing policy since 1997. And since housing is closely tied to the well-being and future prospects of people, private-sector unaffordability and public-housing unavailability over two decades explain a great deal about cumulative social discontent and anger leading to widespread disturbance, from the 2014 Occupy Central unrest to the 2019 anti-government riots.
The Housing Department has revealed that it has taken back about 5,000 public rental flats in just two years from well-off tenants. That’s equivalent to a medium-sized public estate at a construction cost of about HK$5 billion (US$640 million)!
Those evicted tenants are often people who drive luxury cars and own properties on either side of the border; all failed either the income or asset thresholds that were rarely enforced by officials until recently. The willingness of the current administration under John Lee Ka-chiu to crack down on such disqualified tenants likely says less about his decisiveness than intense pressure from Beijing to act.
In recent decades, the private and public housing segments have worked as a positive feedback loop, as their respective unaffordability and unavailability reinforced each other. The average waiting time for public housing is currently 5.7 years, down from a two-decade peak of 6.1 years in 2022. The actual waiting times for many applicants can be much longer.
An authoritative Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey shows that between 2004 and 2019, Hong Kong was in a class of its own from 2010 onwards when compared to Singapore, Sydney, Auckland, Vancouver, London, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, all of which already experienced market bubbles.
Housing is the common thread that runs through many of Hong Kong’s societal problems, including the failed radicalised democratisation.
As Johns Hopkins University political economy professor Hung Ho-fung has argued in his 2022 City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule, social and political instabilities started to build up despite the surface calm in the immediate years following the mass protests against Article 23 legislation (against treason, secession, sedition and subversion) in 2003.