A good housing plan goes beyond building more flats
Carine Lai says the focus on quantity in the government's housing development plan risks turning neighbourhoods into ghettos
One of the best features of Hong Kong, and probably a major reason it is such a safe and vibrant city, is that the affluent and poor live in relatively close proximity to one another. New luxury high rises can be found next to humble old . Public housing estates are sited a stone's throw from private estates. People share the same MTR trains and eat in the same noodle shops.
Although income inequality is a serious problem, the geographical proximity of different income groups probably prevents class relations from deteriorating to a dangerous point. Poverty is not just about having little money, it is also about being cut off from the rest of society.
When people live in neighbourhoods with inadequate facilities, substandard schools, and few decent jobs; when the only graduates their children meet are their teachers; when criminals recruit in schools and control most business opportunities, and officials know residents' demands can be safely ignored; that is when opportunities dwindle and society starts to break down. This is what happened to North American cities.
In the 1960s, activists such as the late, great Jane Jacobs began to warn against the consequences of "price tagging" populations. Massive urban renewal, the relocation of poor residents (usually ethnic minorities) to public housing estates, and the flight of the middle classes to the suburbs accelerated the destruction of local urban economies and resulted in social deterioration and escalating crime.
In Hong Kong, several developments in urban planning are threatening to lead us down the path to income segregation. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has pledged to build 470,000 new housing units over the next decade, 60 per cent of which will be public housing. Some have called for the proportion of public housing to be increased even further.
The majority of this public housing will be located in planned new towns in the distant northern New Territories. This puts us at serious risk of recreating Tin Shui Wai, where some 79 per cent of the housing is subsidised, including Home Ownership Scheme flats, and which has become known for its high rates of suicide, domestic violence and unemployment.
In the old districts, urban renewal policies aim to maximise the efficiency of land use. This means demolishing old buildings and putting the land to more profitable uses - that is, by building shopping malls and expensive flats. While the owners are supposedly compensated enough to buy another flat nearby (although this often does not work out in practice), the tenants are pushed out with cash settlements or resettled in public housing - again, most likely in the distant New Territories.
In the planning of new districts, the government's practice of allocating and selling ever larger plots of land has resulted in the construction of monolithic housing estates with their own shopping malls and recreation facilities. This results in more homogeneous districts and less mixing of income groups at the local level.
While the desire of government officials and legislators to increase Hong Kong's supply of affordable housing is admirable, they need to understand that housing policy is a lot more complex than simply putting people in flats.
