The Executive Director of Urban Renewal Authority, Wei Zhicheng, wrote a blog article "Clarifying the Division of Labor and Roles and Implementing Housing Policy Together", responding to the voices of the public asking that the Urban Redevelopment Authority should make good use of the redevelopment land to develop more public housing, emphasizing that the Urban Renewal Authority "if the existing acquisition and Compensation mechanism and resources” will encounter great challenges in providing public housing.
He reiterated that "it is not financially feasible for the URA to develop public housing." He also pointed out that as a "novice" in this field, the work efficiency of the URA cannot be compared with that of the existing specialized agencies.
At the same time, he also pointed out that the Housing Authority does not have a mechanism to purchase land in old districts from the Authority. Even if the URA builds houses and hand them over to the HA for management, it will increase procedures and waste resources.
In particular, Wei Zhicheng mentioned that the bureau has successively completed the site clearance of six redevelopment projects in To Kwa Wan in recent years, which "involve about 1.2 million square feet of residential floor space". It will cost more than $14 billion”, while the Housing Authority can use the same resources to build more than 21,000 units elsewhere, and the purchase of this batch of land can only develop about 4,000 public housing units with an average area of 300 square feet. The HA and the URA were caught in a "lose-lose" situation.
All land resumption and housing expenses are public funds
There is a big problem with Wei Zhicheng's statement, because he directly converted the property acquisition expenses of the URA's To Kwa Wan project to the construction cost of public housing of 650,000 yuan per unit.
However, if the land allocated by the government to the HA for the construction of public housing is not originally official land, other departments are also required to pay the land reclamation and compensation costs before building the housing. The unit also requires another construction cost, so the two cannot be compared directly at all.
On the other hand, the relevant figures quoted by Wei Zhicheng for redevelopment projects also differ from the information published in the "Urban Renewal Authority 2020-21 Annual Report".
The latter explained that the development information of the six projects involved a total of about 138,915 square meters (or about 1.5 million square feet) of residential floor space, which was 20% higher than what Wei Zhicheng said in his blog post. It is unknown whether the relevant development plans were revised recently or other reasons. However, the objective effect is to at least underestimate the 1,000 public housing units that can be built on the land of the To Kwa Wan project.
There are at least 8 redevelopment projects in To Kwa Wan.
(Photo by Ma Xilie)
Moreover, whether it is recorded in the accounts of the Urban Renewal Authority, the Housing Authority or the Capital Works Reserve Fund, the development of any piece of land requires paying for the acquisition of title and compensation for the original residents and tenants.
Although the URA and the HA are financially autonomous agencies, the resources of the two are also public funds after all. There is no reason for the society to only regard the government's allocation of land to the HA for the expenditure in the process of building public housing units as "internally derived funds". ”, however, the HA’s compensation for the URA’s acquisition expenses is viewed with a different standard.
URA is not without relevant experience
Furthermore, the URA is not really a "novice" in the development of subsidized housing projects, and has had experience in cooperating with some organisations responsible for the implementation of public housing.
For example, Wei Zhicheng's blog article mentioned the Tai Hang West New Village project in cooperation with the Civilian Housing Company in recent years. The original village was originally a private low-rent housing that had been granted land by the government. Units will be reserved to house old tenants and pay rent allowances to them.
Taikeng West Village (Photo by the Transportation and Housing Bureau)
Even in the early years of the establishment of the URA, the URA signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Hong Kong Housing Society, and successively jointly developed projects such as Sham Shui Po Heya and Shau Kei Wan Le Rong Xuan.
Although they are both private housing estates, there is no doubt that both parties already have experience working together.
Since Wei Zhicheng claimed that cooperating with the HA would "add additional quality control and inspection procedures, overlapping functions, and failing to effectively utilize public resources", it is possible to work with the HA to reduce these obstacles.
The aforementioned case also reminds us that subsidized housing development can actually be divided into different types.
In the past, there have been opinions that the quality of flats in the rental housing estates of the Housing Society is generally higher than that of the public rental housing of the Housing Authority, and the rental housing estates of the Housing Society are divided into Type A and Type B flats for families in two income groups, and civilian housing units. Tai Hang Sai New Village is the only private low-rent housing estate in Hong Kong.
Solving the housing difficulties of Hong Kong people is a shared responsibility of the entire society, and no party can expect to stay out of it.
If the URA insists that its way of doing things is different from that of other agencies, it may consider finding another way to develop other types of subsidized rental housing.
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