Hong Kong proclaims measures to handle housing affordability disaster

Hong Kong chief govt John Lee introduced strikes aimed toward addressing town’s housing affordability disaster, calling it “a difficulty of nice public concern” in an annual coverage deal with on Wednesday. 

One keynote coverage introduced in his speech will look to supply a neater path to backed housing for residents below the age of 40 amid mounting considerations about their skill to get a foothold within the metropolis’s crowded housing market.

Underneath the plan, the Hong Kong Housing Authority will allocate an additional poll quantity to candidates aged beneath 40 — a transfer that can improve their probabilities of being chosen for town’s backed Residence Possession Scheme flats.

The federal government will even improve its quota for the “White Type Secondary Market Scheme”— below which secondhand backed flats might be purchased and bought with out a land premium — by 1,500, all of that are reserved for candidates below 40. Solely 4,500 households have been eligible for studios below the scheme in 2023.

The transfer comes amid experiences and fears that younger Hong Kongers within the metropolis could decline promotions and pay raises for the aim of remaining eligible for public housing fairly than enter the non-public market.

To additional deal with youth housing affordability, the federal government will proceed its Youth Hostel Scheme, which subsidizes non-governmental organizations’ renting of lodges and guesthouses to be used as youth hostels.

The 2024 Demographia Worldwide Housing Affordability report ranked town because the least reasonably priced place to discover a residence for over a decade. Town’s over 100,000 “shoe-box sized” subdivided flats, which have been linked to issues with well being and security, are sometimes used to drive residence this truth. 

Lee mentioned on Wednesday that town would launch a brand new system for renting subdivided flats, with “substandard” items to be transformed into “Fundamental Housing Items” that meet new necessities comparable to home windows, bathrooms and a dimension bigger than 86 sq. toes. 

He additionally mentioned the federal government expects to finish about 9,500 new public housing items subsequent yr, transferring towards a aim of finishing about 30,000 items by 2027-2028.

The present wait time for a public housing unit in Hong Kong is 5.5 years. In line with Lee, the wait time could possibly be shortened to 4.5 years in 2026-2027.

The coverage deal with on Wednesday was Lee’s third in his five-year time period, and it had extra deal with bettering residents’ livelihoods and strengthening town’s financial system than earlier than.

Prior addresses had been extra targeted on problems with nationwide safety and post-pandemic restoration measures, with Lee taking up town after a interval of civil unrest that led into the Covid-19 pandemic.