HONG KONG SHOULD LEARN FROM BEIJING
Soon after I first came to Hong Kong in 1993, I read about the “cage homes” where the poor and downtrodden slept in bunk beds surrounded by wire cages.
Three decades later, these homes still exist, but are now called “bedspace apartments”, and licensed by the government. There are an estimated 5,000 “cage” residents, down from 53,200 in 2007. But more broadly, 220,000 people still live in cramped conditions, in subdivided units.
In these 30 years, I have read so many reports about the city’s political and business elite lamenting the lack of easy solutions. Ironically, although some of these individuals have been looking to Beijing for guidance in the past few years, they have failed to learn anything meaningful.
In fact, to resolve the housing crisis, Hong Kong can and should learn from Beijing.
In 2015, when President Xi Jinping vowed the mainland would eradicate absolute poverty by the end of 2020, about 70 million people lived under the poverty line. As Xi took personal responsibility for the project, hundreds of thousands were mobilised to speak to impoverished households across the country, and start files detailing their needs and how to help them.
In February 2021, Xi announced a sweeping victory, with 99 million people lifted out of absolute poverty after eight years.
In contrast, I bet the Hong Kong government doesn’t have an accurate tally of the numbers of people living in cage homes and subdivided flats around the city, let alone their needs and the causes of their hardship.
Xi has urged Hong Kong to solve the housing problem and Xia Baolong, the top official in charge of Hong Kong, even challenged the city to get rid of cage homes and subdivided flats by 2049. But Hong Kong can’t really afford to wait that long.
Is Lee bold enough to bring that deadline forward to 2032, or the end of his prospective second term?
That means that Lee must take up the reins personally, adopt a whole-of-government approach, and draw up not only a new housing policy but also a holistic plan to help the city’s poor and downtrodden. It will be a tough fight but not impossible, with the full support of the Hong Kong public and the central government.
Source: CNA
