Hong Kong citizens dissatisfied with housing policies: Survey

A recent survey released by the largest party in Hong Kong's Legislative Council shows that more than half of the citizens share the discontentment on government's overall housing policies.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) released the results on Wednesday, after randomly interviewed 918 citizens through telephone. With 54% interviewees expressing "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" on the general housing policies, DAB said the lack of implementation on current policies was the leading cause.

"Stubbornly high property and rental prices, together with government's insufficient short-term policies in housing supply contribute to citizens' negative attitudes," said Leung Che-cheung, legislative councilor and DAB's spokesman on housing.

The government's policy address has mentioned that the total supply of public rental housing (PRH) will be at least 100,000 units over the five years starting from 2018, Leung said, but the PRH allocation status remains severe and the gap between supply and demand is widening.

Anxiety on the housing supply shortage even devaluated the idea of environmental conservation in Hong Kong, said Raphael Chan, DAB's deputy spokesman on housing. The results show that 48.9% of the interviewees regard the reclamation outside Victoria Harbor as a proper way for the government to enhance land supply.

"We are quite astonished to find only 32.5% of the interviewees answering in the negative," Chan said. "Hong Kong people has been putting a lot more attention into the environmental protection, but it seems that housing problem weighs more."

However, interviewees tend to agree that the government is taking positive steps in solving the housing problem. Around 44% people said the government is actively developing land to enhance housing supply, while 35% had the opposite view.

Leung said that a series of housing price control policies, including the buyer stamp duty and extra stamp duty which aim to increase the cost of property speculation, are functioning. About 66% interviewees prospected the housing price to stay the same or to slump in the near future.

Moreover, Leung suggested that the government should consider to re-launch housing policies like the "Sandwich Class Housing Scheme" or the "Tenants Purchase Scheme" which could help lower income population to buy property. There are more than 60% interviewees show support to these two policies respectively.

Though the DAB has been a supporter of the "Tenants Purchase Scheme", the idea has remained controversial. According to local media's report, Wu Moon-hoi, chairman of Hong Kong Housing Society objected to sell public housing, saying the scheme had been creating a lot more problems in the past and could delay the construction of the PRH.