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From resisting to relying on the government

2021-11-13T05:14:19.577Z


When the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Chen Fan, attended a transitional housing experience sharing session on the 5th of this month, he stated that the transitional housing had “operated for at least a few years, or even ten or more years,” and that the transitional housing would be available after sufficient public housing supply.


When the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Chen Fan, attended a transitional housing experience sharing session on the 5th of this month, he said that transitional housing "has been in operation for at least a few years, or even ten years or more." When the supply of public housing is sufficient, the number of transitional housing Will be reduced.

Recall that the Hong Kong Government has resisted transitional housing in the past, but today it has continued to build more. This change may be due to the increasing number of people unable to live in peace.

To make matters worse, the residents think that they can get rid of renting "subdivided housing" after moving into the transitional housing, but recently there have been reports of people worrying about "returning to the past" because of the expiration of the lease, instead of transitioning to public housing.

In the final analysis, speeding up the construction of public housing is the housing policy that will cure the root cause.


Housing is a major problem in Hong Kong. After the reunification, the number of public housing units was relatively abundant. The average waiting time fell to two years. In the second half of Donald Tsang’s tenure, private property prices and rents soared, and the number and time waiting for public housing also increased.

During Liang Zhenying's tenure, people discussed using transitional housing to improve the housing environment.

Former Legislative Council Member Chan Yuen-han and fellow students advocated making good use of idle land to reduce the time for building houses, including building "floor-over container houses", but suggested that the public screamed and sighed why the grassroots were so "fallen" .

The accountability officials at the time also affirmed their rejection. For example, Zhang Bingliang, the former director of the Transport and Housing Bureau, reviewed his administration in his book "The Reality That Cannot Be Avoided", revealing that the government and the Long-term Housing Strategy Steering Committee considered idle land to be difficult to find, and land should also be used. The construction of public housing and the conversion of industrial buildings are expensive and not livable. It is difficult to overcome the regional barriers, so the proposal was put aside.

The government's housing policy has been ineffective, the problem of social structural poverty has not been resolved, and the low-income class living in sub-divided housing has become the victims.

(Photo by Liang Pengwei)

The transition house takes the position of the current government to overthrow the previous government

The turning point came after Carrie Lam took office as Chief Executive in July 2017.

The new team successively expressed support for the transitional housing project in the early days of taking office, and the first "Policy Address" implemented the provision of various forms of transitional housing, and in mid-2018 announced the establishment of a task force to assist and promote more transitional housing promoted by private organizations. Later, in October 2019, a target of supplying 10,000 units within three years was set.

The government clearly stated that "before land shortages and supply are not in place... it will try to make good use of existing housing to assist families who have been waiting for public housing for a long time and residents with poor living conditions."

The reason why the SAR government changed its stance on transitional housing is that the housing problem has become more and more serious. After the "subdivided housing", there are unreasonable housing such as coffin rooms and space capsules; second, such as "being light", etc. Organizations spontaneously raise private units and then provide low-rents to the grassroots. Social service organizations are actively introducing temporary rental housing programs from other places. The government's participation can be said to be just taking advantage of the trend. Thirdly, there are private developers willing to lend land and old buildings to build units, which is expected to be large Increase the supply of transitional housing.

The extensive construction of transition houses should only be expedient

With the gradual use of various types of social housing in recent years, the location and decoration of the transitional housing are much more ideal than the original "Flyover Container Housing" design. Many residents have strengthened their personal networks and improved their health during their stay. Therefore, they are regarded as a stopgap. In terms of calculation, the transition housing is considered a desirable policy.

It is precisely because of this that the current government seems to be very willing to continue this policy. After increasing the unit supply to 15,000 in January last year, this year’s Policy Address has increased the number to 20,000.

In the transitional housing sharing session, Chen Fan pointed out that there are already 2,000 units in operation, and more than 4,000 units will be completed in the middle of next year. It is expected that another 10,000 units will be put into service in the middle of the year. The standard is just around the corner.

(Photo by Huang Baoying)

However, compared with the 122,000 households living in poor living conditions, the 20,000 transitional housing is still a drop in the bucket after all.

What is particularly worrying is that while helping a small number of grassroots households to get rid of poor housing, the government seems to have begun to try to replace public housing with transitional housing that is "how fast and cost-effective".

Officials often say that transitional housing is easy to load and unload and the unit price is cheaper, and the quality of housing is improved quickly. On the other hand, the progress of finding land to build public housing has not seen any significant improvement so far.

Chen Fan said that it would take "ten years or more" to operate transitional housing estates. He also pointed out that the number of units was "not the largest, only more." In fact, it is no different from the stated measures will be constant.

On the other hand, behind the increase in the number of constructions, it is not ruled out that the government is concealing that the original promised supply is not up to the standard, because by the end of next year, the number of units that the government has completed and is expected to be completed is only about 6,700, and it is estimated that it will not be until the second quarter of 2023. It reaches more than 10,000 units, so the only way to rationalize the backward progress is to increase the number.

The key is still the shortage of public housing

Even in terms of implementation, there are many problems with the existing transitional housing measures.

Recently, the combined social housing "Nanchang 220" has become the focus of public opinion because some residents worry that public housing will not be allocated before the end of the two-year lease in September next year. However, the land temporarily borrowed by the project has been determined to be returned to the developer by the end of the year. There is a good chance that they need to return to the "subdivided housing" life.

At present, 18 households in this project have been arranged or will be allocated public housing, while the remaining 60 households have to be relocated.

The Hong Kong Council of Social Service, which is in charge of organizing the project, is planning to deploy social workers to assist in relocation and house search, and will arrange for such households to move to similar projects to live in or share flats with other people.

On October 29, 2020, Carrie Lam visited the transitional housing project "Nanchang 220" at Nan Cheong Street, Sham Shui Po.

(Information Services Department)

The example of "Nanchang 220" reveals the biggest shortcoming of the temporary land and units borrowed by the transitional housing, that is, the lease term is limited and the tenants may not be able to wait for the allocation of public housing before the expiration of the term.

Due to the time-consuming research, survey, and approval of the project and the slowing down of the epidemic situation, only two years of the five-year lease period of the land are actually left for tenants to move in.

Although these tenants have been waiting for public housing for at least three years, the latest average waiting time has risen to nearly six years, so they are worried about their situation after the contract expires.

The government responded that the "Nanchang 220" project, as the first of its kind, requires a longer time to prepare. It also stated that most of the future modular housing will have a period of not less than seven to eight years. However, this response certainly failed to clarify the doubts of the residents and the community.

After all, if a family moves into a transitional housing in the second half or third of a long-term lease project, they still have a chance to not get upstairs before the end of the land lease.

Moreover, Chen Fan recently stated that the waiting time for public housing will not be significantly improved until 2027/28 to 2031/32. Prior to this, the waiting time for public housing applicants is unlikely to be shortened much.

It is also worth noting that in order to avoid the embarrassment that the lease is not long enough, the operating agency may tend to select families with a longer waiting time and a higher chance of housing allocation, rather than applying for families with poor living conditions at the moment.

Once this happens, it will weaken the effect of the transition house itself in assisting the poor grassroots.

Although the government has never guaranteed that the next stop for transitional housing tenants will be public housing, the authorities and the Housing Authority have stated that they will target general applicants for the first allocation of flats in about three years on average. Therefore, the public understands that transitional housing is going upstairs. The previous stop was also a reasonable expectation.

The predicament of the "Nanchang 220" project just shows that the transitional housing project must operate smoothly and allow more families to get rid of poor housing faster. To meet this reasonable expectation, the government still cannot avoid speeding up the construction of public housing.

Only by going upstairs for a certain period of time can the grassroots avoid staying in the transitional housing stage or returning to the "subdivided housing" and "coffin housing."

In the final analysis, the transitional housing is just a product of dealing with the abundance of bad housing and the shortage of public housing, and it should not exist in perpetuity.

For the transition housing measure to be considered a success, the government must clearly set the end date for it, and ten years must be too long.

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2021-11-13

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