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Following are the opening remarks by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, at the press conference today (December 16) on the Long Term Housing Strategy:
The new Long Term Housing Strategy promulgated today is a major milestone in Hong Kong's housing policy. We are also releasing an Implementation Milestone Paper as at December this year. In future, such a report will be published annually at year-end.
Guided by the vision of helping all households in Hong Kong to gain access to adequate and affordable housing, the Government has decided to make an important policy shift by adopting a supply-led strategy, with a view to averting the current supply-demand imbalance.
Drawing lessons from the past, the Long Term Housing Strategy seeks to maintain flexibility by introducing an annual review of the long term demand projection, to help generate a rolling 10-year housing supply target to reflect the latest needs and circumstances.
The Long Term Housing Strategy sets out three main strategies:
(1) to build more public rental housing units and to ensure the rational use of existing stock;
(2) to provide more subsidised sale flats, expand the forms of subsidised home ownership and facilitate the market circulation of existing stock, and
(3) to stabilise the residential property market through steady land supply and appropriate demand management measures, and to promote good sales and tenancy practices for private residential properties.
The Government has updated the projection of long term housing demand for the 10-year period from 2015-16 to 2024-25. Based on this, the total housing supply target is now set at 480 000 units, with the public-private split of 60:40. Accordingly, the public housing supply target will be 290 000 units, comprising 200 000 public rental housing units and 90 000 subsidised sale flats, whereas the private housing supply target will be 190 000 units.
Up to now, we have secured the necessary land sites for building up to 254 000 public housing units. In the coming three to four years, we expect market supply of some 74 000 first-hand private housing units.
Subsidised home ownership is an essential element of the housing ladder which helps promote social mobility. Apart from building flats under the Home Ownership Scheme, the Government will consider how to expand the forms of subsidised home ownership and leverage on the private sector's capacity to increase the supply of subsidised sale flats.
We note from previous discussions that there were suggestions that the Government should introduce measures such as tenancy control, rent subsidy, regulating or even eradicating subdivided units through legislation, to provide some quick-fixes for those in need, particularly the inadequately housed households.
However, such measures do not increase housing supply which is at the root of our problems. Tenancy control may even reduce supply and lead to higher asking rents, thus aggravating the problems faced by needy households.
To achieve the 10-year housing supply target, the Government has to increase land supply in the short, medium and long term through a multi-pronged strategy, involving land use review and rezoning, increasing development intensity, cultivating new development areas, and reclamation on an appropriate scale.
Local communities often worry about the impact of housing development on traffic, the environment and the provision of community facilities. Coping with rising building costs, construction industry capacity constraint and the Housing Authority's financing pressure presents further problems. These problems and hurdles have to be overcome.
If we try to evade the problem, or if we lack the determination to accept a trade-off and make difficult choices between housing development and keeping lands untouched, then we are doomed to failure. The vicious cycle will continue, and our younger generation will not see the end of the tunnel.
I call upon all sectors of the community to join hands in implementing the Long Term Housing Strategy, so that our next generation can look forward to better and more affordable housing.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the opening remarks.)
Ends/Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Issued at HKT 17:52
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