Source:
https://scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3045558/why-pick-disney-cover-hong-kong-housing-policy-failures Letters
Why pick on Disney to cover up Hong Kong housing policy failures?
Quiet carriages on the Disneyland Resort line in September 2019, as Hong Kong continued to be roiled by protests. The city’s housing minister has urged Hong Kong Disneyland to allow the building of transitional housing on idle land reserved for the theme park’s expansion. Photo: Nora Tam
I refer to the “My Take” column of January 8 by Alex Lo (“Stop hoarding land for Hong Kong Disneyland”) and your coverage of comments from Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan Fan relating to land at Disneyland (“Housing chief urges Disneyland to release expansion site for housing”, January 6).
This particular suggestion shows how ill-equipped and devoid of proper planning the government is to resolve this or any of Hong Kong’s problems, some of which are root causes to the present tensions. Picking on Disney is like going after a soft target, and not tackling the real needs of Hong Kong.
I recall the debate that raged between London and Beijing about funding the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. The land released at the old Kai Tak airport site was meant for badly needed housing. Nearly 22 years on, what housing is on the old airport site?
So far, we have a white elephant of a luxury cruise terminal for the super-rich that is seldom used, and plans for a stadium that will never make a profit.
The government should repossess the Kai Tak land at the price purchased, and build properly designed, affordable housing there. Forget stadiums, that can come when the government has satisfied greater needs.
Why will the government not fulfil the first chief executive’s promise to build some 85,000 homes per year? It will not do so, because major property developers control the land and have a land bank that should shame the government.
Recent token offers to release land by the likes of Henderson Land are just that, a token. Land with no infrastructure is not a serious suggestion.
As for Disney, maybe Mr Lo and Mr Chan have forgotten how the government bent over backwards with incentives to get Disney to come to Hong Kong. Now they want to make Disney a target to cover for their incompetence. Maybe the government should pay Disney to leave and then keep major developers away from the place.
Urgently address the housing shortage and property prices, and you will go some way to healing the sores in society.
David M Dixon, Wan Chai