Policy Address: How CE Might Tackle Housing Woes

John Lee steps up to give his maiden Policy Address on Wednesday morning, with the Chief Executive and his team promising in advance of the speech that he'll unveil a series of measures to attract international business and talent to the SAR.

But like former leaders of Hong Kong, Lee is also facing the challenge of tackling the city's shortage of affordable housing, a problem that's particularly acute given that waiting times for public flats are now close to their highest level since the handover, with an average wait of six years.

Officials have indicated they are looking at options to speed up the provision of public housing, but acknowledged it'll take a number of years before more flats become available.

One suggestion for speeding up housing supply, put forward by groups such as the Federation of Public Housing Estates, is to allow private developers to take part in building Home Ownership Scheme flats.

Other groups have proposed making better use of brownfield sites in the area earmarked for the administration's massive Northern Metropolis development to build public housing, which they say could generate some 100,000 flats.

In a study with Greenpeace, the Liber Research Community said it found more than 400 hectares of land that could be ready for development in just a few years.

"The 50-hectare brownfield located in the Lau Fau Shan district is one of the brownfield sites [where] we think the government can quickly provide housing," said the think tank's Karman Cheung, noting that some of the plots on its watchlist are already vacant and are next to proposed new towns.

Meanwhile, a deputy director of the Society for Community Organisation (Soco), Sze Lai-shan, says the government should prioritise the construction of public housing for the good of grassroots residents.

"In the past three years under Covid-19, the waiting time for public housing is even longer than before. [The tenants'] income was reduced and the rent kept rising, it's very hard for them to keep waiting," she said.

Soco is also calling for greater financial support for the unemployed, demanding the government turn a one-off HK$10,000 allowance for people who lost their jobs during the fifth wave of the pandemic into a regular subsidy.

In his election manifesto, Lee said that he wanted to form service-and-care teams across 18 districts to help with community work during emergencies like typhoons, and to offer assistance to the underprivileged.

Some community groups have already said they're ready to pitch in, adding they have the networks and experience at the district level.