Innovative solutions needed for HK’s land, housing woes

Understandably land supply and housing appear to be two of the main topics which contenders need to tackle to secure both Election Committee and public support in next month’s Chief Executive election. Potential suggestions and solutions will no doubt abound but in the final analysis any successful package of policies and measures will need to respond to some fundamental challenges as to what to provide, how and for whom.

The “how” is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome in that the reality is that from a land perspective we need to look at a combination of brownfield, greenfield, reclamation, rezoning and regeneration solutions – in other words there is no easy answer as we need to optimise the use of a relatively scarce resource. The “how”, however, inevitably involves choices which are difficult to resolve at times and there are different views among the community as to what should go where, and in the worst cases an unwillingness to accept that any new development should be permitted albeit appropriate sites are available. Clearly, given the obvious demand for new homes, there is a need for a meaningful public debate involving all sectors of society to establish acceptable priorities of land use in the territory but the present process of structured engagement, with its consensus formula, is unlikely to provide the answers. This raises the whole issue of public participation going forward and the possibility of creating a truly independent agency to act as the interface between the government and whole range of stakeholders that need to be involved.

How also do we solicit from the administration what might be regarded as a register of all potential sites for the purpose of discussion with the community, with time frames, cost implications, planning issues and land lease considerations so as to enable an informed debate on priorities, availability and alternatives? What mechanisms do we or should we have to compensate or mitigate the loss of public realm for use for housing purposes? Similarly, will the next administration be willing to address the prescriptive and inflexible nature of much of our present building and planning regulatory environment and will there be the will to encourage the exercise of discretion by government officials so as to facilitate a smoother and quicker delivery process?

If we move to “what”, there are obviously many issues surrounding the current availability of both public and private residential supply, ranging from the unacceptable length of the waiting list for public housing, to an absence of mobility within the Housing Authority portfolio, to the reluctance of existing Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) owners to dispose of their units, to an absence of product for those whose income exceeds HOS limits but have no hope of purchasing a private flat in the open market, to an unacceptable situation where affordability is driving down the size of unit to an untenable level.