Hong Kong Land for Hong Kong People

Fixing the Failures of Our Housing Policy

Yue Chim Richard Wong

• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Economics
• eBook ISBN:
  9789888313648
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

Hong Kong is one of the world's most densely populated cities. Land supply, property values, and housing provision are inextricably linked with the city's economic growth and questions of economic equality. In Hong Kong Land for Hong Kong People, Yue Chim Richard Wong traces the history of Hong Kong's postwar housing policy. He then discusses current housing problems and their solutions, drawing on examples from around the world. Wong argues that housing policy in Hong Kong, with its multiple, often incompatible objectives, and its focus on supply over demand, can no longer satisfy the needs of a diverse and dynamic population. He recommends three simple low-cost policies to promote homeownership and social mobility: sell public rental housing units to the sitting tenants; make subsidized homes more affordable; and reform the public housing program along lines adopted in Singapore, where government-built housing may be resold or leased in a free market. This is the second of Richard Wong's collections of articles on society and economy in Hong Kong. The first, Diversity and Occasional Anarchy, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2013, examines the growing contradictions in Hong Kong's economy predicament in historical context.

Table of contents

• Illustrations
• 1: Time to Count the Social Cost of Uniting a People Divided
• 2: Setting the Scene
• 3: Supply and Demand Factors in Housing
• 4: On the Nature of Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong
• 5: Comparing Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong and Singapore
• 6: Equal Yet Unequal
• 7: The Inequity of Small Housing Units
• 8: Small Housing Units and High Property Prices
• 9: On Public Housing Policy and Social Justice
• 10: Economic and Social Consequences of Public Housing Policies
• 11: Demand for Homeownership and the Housing Ladder
• 12: How to Warm Up the HOS Secondary Market
• 13: Divorce, Remarriage, and the Long-Term Housing Strategy
• 14: Divorce, Inequality, Poverty, and the Vanishing Middle Class
• 15: The Impact of Global Economic Forces on Housing in Hong Kong
• 16: The Linked Rate, Domestic Stability, and Dual Integration
• 17: Reasons for Keeping the Linked Rate
• 18: Why Speculation Is Not a Bad Thing
• 19: Speculators, Property Agents, and the Spreading of Risk in the Presale Housing Market
• 20: How the Application List System Became the Winner’s Curse
• 21: Is There a High Land-Price Policy in Hong Kong?
• 22: Lima’s Other Path, Tsoi Yuen Village, and the Northeast New Territories
• 23: Stranded between Singapore’s Way and Lima’s Other Path
• 24: Subsidized Housing and Stability
• 25: Diversity and Occasional Anarchy
• 26: Population, Poverty, and the Triumph of the City
• 27: Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 1)
• 28: Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 2)
• 29: Conclusions and Reflections
• Epilogue