Residents frustrated by pandemic and unaffordable housing will find no hope in Carrie’s Policy Address

^{Chief Executive Carrie Lam Photo: Belt and Road News}

Occupied with the Concert for the Animals and a private corporate war, it has taken HONG KONG BUZZ time to look at Carrie Lam’s final policy address of her first term. Abandon hope all ye who venture here. Today we look at two areas of greatest concern to residents — the pandemic and housing.

PANDEMIC

Our Chief Executive, frustratingly, offers us no path way back to a normal life. As always she is solely focused on her masters on the mainland and what she thinks they will like. There is no mention at all of travel bubbles allowing us to go visit Australia, New Zealand or Singapore, as examples, and return without being imprisoned in a hotel room for weeks.

Ms Lam says her chief secretary led a HK delegation to the mainland last month to explore with mainland authorities gradual resumption of quarantine-free travel across the border. No details are given as to when this may happen. Another meeting will be held soon. That’s all. Nothing to give hope to people begging to be able to travel overseas without being punished on their return.

On the Government’s handling of the virus crisis, Ms Lam said, “…We have to do our best to control the epidemic for the community, so that normal cross-boundary flow of people can be resumed as early as possible.” The strategy advised by experts has been to guard against imported cases and resurgence of local infections. “We have weathered four waves of surging cases and have aptly adjusted our anti-epidemic strategy in the light of experience.”

This pandemic has wrecked everyone’s life. We feel like we are in a war. And that’s all our leader has to say to us!

HOUSING

The despairing middle classes who see no chance they will ever be able to afford their own home in the world’s most unaffordable housing market will find no hope in Ms Lam’s policy address. She gives a lot of time to public housing but this will not benefit ordinary Sai Kung-CWB families who have no choice but to rent.

She makes promises she doesn’t keep. Early in the address, Ms Lam talks about “establishing a housing ladder for home ownership”, then neglects to say how this will be achieved. It seems she became exhausted after belabouring national security and how she’s delivering on “one country” for her Beijing bosses and didn’t have energy for the things that really matter to Hong Kong people.

There are, however, matters missing from the speech that will please many people. The gigantic reclamation scheme, Lantao Tomorrow, isn’t mentioned. We hope it will quietly be forgotten. Now the emphasis is on the Northern Metropolis, massive development in the northwest of the New Territories.

The pendulum swings back. Conservationists will be angry she plans to take land from our Green Belts for housing. A total of 210 sites are being rezoned from Green Belt land. This amounts to just 2 per cent of the 1600 hectares in the Green Belts. But sad cynics will see it as just the tip of an evil wedge. The Planning Department is looking at sites with steeper slopes as well as development in wetlands and their buffer areas.

Ms Lam outlines overall housing policy: “Tilting towards public housing in land allocation . . .delinking the price of Home Ownership Scheme flats from market prices, imposing tenancy controls on subdivided flats (this is shameful; they should be banned) cash allowances for public rental housing and building transitional housing.” Three hundred and fifty hectares of land have been identified to provide 330,000 public housing units over the next 10 years.

For private housing, the Government will strive to secure 170 hectares of land over the next decade to produce 100,000 homes. This excludes Urban Renewal Authority and other private sector projects. “A new mindset” has been adopted by the Government to benefit people queuing for public rental housing. Transitional housing totalling 15,000 units is to be built. Cash allowances will be provided for 30,000 households.

Ms Lam refutes the common view that the Government does not do enough to secure brownfield sites for housing. Fifty per cent of brownfield sites have been covered by housing projects. Seven hundred hectares of brownfield sites will be resumed in coming years. Many projects are ongoing where government facilities are being moved into caverns to free up land.

As usual the Government is chumming up with the Heung Yee Kuk, an entity many see as the scourge of the New Territories. Ms Lam said the Government will set up a working group to liaise with the HYK. “Tso/Tong traditions should be respected, but the current impasse should be broken.”