In the midst of Hong Kong’s turmoil, Carrie Lam must prioritise the housing crisis and get tough with property developers

Unless our Hong Kong administration is clinically stone-deaf, and whatever its (or China’s) views on the black shirts’ demands, this summer of conflict and unprecedented street demonstrations have highlighted one problem that must receive urgent and courageous attention: Hong Kong housing.

While the demonstrations of recent weeks have drawn out many groups with many grievances – including those on either side of the deep and unbridgeable divide between fealty to China and independence – it is the appalling failure of housing policy over the past two decades, along with the stress it has created, that has played a unique role in mobilising ordinary people in ordinary communities around Hong Kong.

I concede that after the dark and violent past fortnight, there are certain priorities that overshadow everything: bring an end to the violence and get protests off the streets and into manageable forums where grievances can be heard and considered.

Our leaders must at the same time start thinking about a framework and timetable for addressing the constitutional shortcomings of the Basic Law, and how to build democratic arrangements that are more effective in hearing and responding to community needs and concerns. It is worth thinking about such a framework taking the form of a resolution commission tasked over a year, perhaps more, to make recommendations for long-term solutions.

But in the midst of the short-term crisis management, and laying the foundation for a long-term resolution, the grievances that have clutched the hearts of so many Hong Kong people also need public attention. None is more pressing than housing – and none is more amenable to such a clear menu of well-considered solutions.

Through the course of 2018, as the Task Force on Land Supply toiled under the thoughtful technocrat Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, a clear picture emerged of the scale of Hong Kong’s housing needs and how these needs would be met, after years of wilful neglect that followed the appointment of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen as chief executive in 2005.

Given the emergency nature of the problem, as has been made clear by the past months of increasingly violent conflict, the government is now justified in using emergency powers to sweep aside the often petty obstacles that stood in the way of addressing these needs.

Neither violence nor Beijing can fix Hong Kong’s problems

Taking into account that Hong Kong’s population might rise to 9 million by 2030 and that there is a need to replace ageing housing stock, with more than 250,000 people in the queue for public housing, the task force said we were facing a shortfall of at least 1,200 hectares, of which 800 hectares would be needed fast.

An audit of available land – the task force’s covered 18 options – revealed that expeditious development of six New Development Areas in the New Territories would provide 2,500 hectares. In addition, there are 1,300 hectares of brownfield land and a further 1,000 hectares of agricultural land spread through the New Territories.

At the time, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor rejected most of these options because of tedious planning and obstacles to land resumption. These obstacles are mainly related to compensation to the ancestral villagers in the New Territories linked with the powerful Heung Yee Kuk, and with the big property developers who had stealthily, over decades, built up massive and lucrative land banks in the area.

For example, Henderson Land is estimated to have a land bank totalling around 650 hectares, while Sun Hung Kai has just over 440 hectares and New World Development around 250 hectares.

Bypassing these considerable bureaucratic and political constraints, Lam instead planned for a massive new artificial island southeast of Lantau .

Why Hong Kong is not Singapore – it’s all about money and politics

This was always ludicrous. Not only was the new island likely to cost around HK$1 trillion, it would also take more than a decade to take shape. It was grandiose, and did nothing to solve our community’s housing problems in any politically relevant time frame.

I would argue that the emergency circumstances arising in the past months out of the ill-judged plunge into the extradition bill have wholly changed the context for the housing and land supply argument.

If Lam was willing to cast off all reasonable legislative restraint to ram the deeply unsettling extradition legislation down the public’s throat, then she surely has no excuse for pussy-footing around planning and land resumption obstacles when it comes to tackling the land supply problem. Emergency circumstances call for emergency remedies.

So she should park her grand new Lantau Tomorrow Vision, and instead roll up her sleeves to fast-track the resumption of green and brown land through the New Territories. If it takes changes in planning rules, then do it. If it takes money to buy off villagers, then do it.

Yuen Long violence exposes villages’ turf mentality

The government could make its own contribution by offering up unused land reserved for future expansion of Disneyland. Beijing – or more precisely the People’s Liberation Army – could contribute by offering the Castle Peak firing range (2,260 hectares) and the barely-used Shek Kong airstrip and village (159 hectares).

Our property developers should be immediately instructed to use or lose their land banks. If they have common sense, and any recognition of the deep resentment caused by their gouging of Hong Kong’s wealth over the past two decades, they might even consider gifting to the government some of their land banks for urgently needed public housing.

While the government is at it, there should be a fundamental review of the land auction process that guarantees eye-watering prices for any aspiring homeowners. It should also introduce minimum standards for housing quality that would bar developers from building micro flats, and that would require things like lifts and doors wide enough for wheelchairs. Such standards should ensure property developers offer homes, not leasehold bed spaces.

If some good is to come out of the catastrophic past six months, then it must start with housing, and it must start fast.

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view