The Housing Authority (HA) last week released the latest figures on the waiting time for public rental housing. The average waiting time is now over four years, which deviates from the three-year waiting time promised by the authority. From a practical point of view, this is not a surprise because earlier reports already showed that there has been a big increase in applications for public rental housing. People have doubts over the three-year service pledge as the average waiting time was already over three years. Nevertheless, when the average waiting time was still around three years, the sentiment was still not strong. One point society needs to be aware of is that the three-year service pledge refers to the average waiting time of allocation of a unit of public rental housing for qualified applicants. Single applicants are by definition excluded. When we include single applicants and those who have a preference over the location, the actual waiting time will be much higher.

One inconvenient truth is that many people do not understand the mechanism. When the media report cases of long waiting times, people naturally tend to criticize the government for doing nothing to solve the problem. The reality, however, is that the problem is so complicated there is simply no quick fix.

The biggest obstacle faced in the provision of public rental housing is the lack of land. The government gets criticized for not being able to provide sufficient land for public rental housing. Worse still, people see that there are land auctions, which many perceive to mean the government has been focusing only on private housing supply at the expense of public rental housing. This is simply a misconception. In the old days when people only cared about having a place to live, the government could just focus on the building of public rental housing. However, this approach has been proved to be outdated. Nowadays a more reasonable concept is to have sustainable community development. In simple words, a community needs to have diverse land use so that there will be sustainable development. A community needs to have infrastructure and offer employment opportunities. These requirements cannot be achieved if the government focuses only on developing public rental housing. A good mix of public rental housing, private housing, community infrastructure, commercial facilities that offer employment opportunities, etc, are all crucial to the sustainable development of the community. Tin Shui Wai is a good example of the importance of sustainable community development. But failure in this regard can result in high social costs.

Another problem faced by the HA is that unlike private developers, it cannot keep a land bank. Private developers can accumulate and hoard up their land holdings in ways that best fit their own interests. But the HA is obligated to continuously provide public rental housing to the people and simply cannot hoard up a lot of land resources to smooth out the supply of rental public housing in long term. Hence, the HA always has the problem of shortage of land. Such a constraint makes it extremely challenging for the HA to consistently meet the strong demand for public rental housing.

Though people realize that Hong Kong needs more public housing, the acquisition of land for public housing is another major obstacle. Many people are not happy when there are plans to build public housing projects near their homes. It is true that public housing will bring inconvenience to residents in the vicinity. It is true that public housing residents' demand for community facilities will pose competition to nearby residents. It is true that background diversity of public housing residents will cause concerns to nearby residents. Given these varieties of concerns, even if the government has land for public housing, it is not easy to seek consent from local residents. Strong objections are also often heard from district councilors. Therefore, having more land for public housing is something that is easier said than done.

In the near future, the waiting time for public rental housing is unlikely to be significantly shortened. The HA has considered various means to increase public housing supply. However, it is unrealistic to expect a quick solution to this chronic problem.

(HK Edition 08/18/2016 page1)