Concrete Analysis | Hong Kong’s housing conundrum – affordable to whom?

We know that Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Yuet-ngor has housing as one of her key priorities and we have been told she is embarking on major dialogue with the community on different ways that could be considered to break the housing supply log jam.

We also assume that part of the discussion will inevitably focus on the issue of affordability and hopefully it will include debate on the definition of “affordable”, who are the targets and what policies and initiatives – institutional, social and regulatory as well as physical – are needed to achieve successful outcomes.

The starting point has to be what do we mean by “affordability”, because currently in Hong Kong all sectors of the community (except the very high income earners) would claim that they are faced with an affordability gap when it comes to the housing market. This is not just a local issue but a highly complex challenge faced by almost every growing city in the world.

Each city is driven by a different philosophy and the policies introduced are tailored to whether affordable housing is regarded as a basic need, a right, an entitlement or a public good, and intermediate housing is provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market. It is also important to define whether we mean something that can realistically be funded in financial terms by those targeted by the specific initiative, or is more of an aspiration in terms of size, standard and location.