Donald Liao Poon-huai, a key colonial government official behind the story of Hong Kong’s public housing development, passed away last week. He was 96. News of his death has not caused a stir in the society. But for many who grew up in the 1980s, it stoked a feeling of nostalgia of the good old days; they could not help but lament the state of the city’s subsidised housing in bewilderment.

One of the chief architects

The story of Donald Liao, an architect-turned-top official, began when he joined the government in 1960 after he graduated from the University of Hong Kong’s architecture department. He became the city’s first director of housing from 1973 to 1980. He played a key role in the design and development of several landmark public housing estates, including Ma Tau Wai in central Kowloon and Wah Fu in southern Hong Kong Island – with a vision and a heart.

He is also known as a pioneer of Hong Kong’s subsidised home ownership scheme (HOS), which served as a key ladder for public rental housing families to own their own flats, helping to foster a community spirit of upward mobility and a sense of ownership in the society.

In an interview marking the 50th anniversary of the statutory body Housing Authority in 2023, he shared his thoughts of integrating social harmony into the building of public housing, citing Wah Fu Estate as an example.

Speaking to the Chinese-language Ming Pao in 2024, he said he acted to install toilets and kitchens in each public housing unit to avoid conflicts that occurred frequently among residents in resettlement housing due to shared toilets. He said he only made use of design to solve common problems. “(I’m) not particularly wise. This is just something we should do.”

If the late governor Lord MacLehose was the father of Hong Kong’s public housing development, Liao was one of the chief architects. One of the lasting images loaded with symbolism featured him taking the late Queen Elizabeth II to a tour at the Oi Man Estate in Ho Man Tin during her visit to Hong Kong in 1975. Oi Man, literally means “love the people”, was the first public housing estate completed under the late Lord MacLehose’s landmark 10-year public housing plan.

Housing problem after handover

The public housing programme played a big part in meeting the basic housing needs of the people for them to live in peace and work happily, laying the foundation for the city’s economic take-off in the 1980s.

Worsened by a surge of property prices in the final years of colonial rule, the first chief executive Tung Chee-hwa has identified housing as one of his three priority tasks after taking the helm of the Special Administrative Region. He announced a plan to provide a total of 85,000 housing units each year in his maiden policy address in 1997. In 10 years, he hoped seven out of 10 families would own their flats. The average waiting time for public rental housing would be shortened from 6.5 years to three years. The housing plan, known as the “85,000 plan”, failed miserably.

29 years after Tung started dreaming his housing dream, the city’s yearly new housing figure is still far below 85,000. The latest waiting time for a public housing unit was 5.1 years.

First broached by former chief executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the basic housing unit scheme, or light public housing, has emerged as a signature housing strategy adopted by her successor John Lee to tackle the chronic problem of providing decent housing for people whose living conditions became an embarrassment to the central government and the administration, in that order.

Still, the average waiting time for a basic housing unit stood at 3.2 years.

Sharp contrast

There is no denying the living conditions of basic housing sites are much better than those who live in caged homes and subdivided flats, also known as “shoe-box units”, but are a distance from those in Wah Fu and Ma Tau Wai, which were built half a century ago.

Worse, it remains unclear whether the basic housing units, whose quality and living environment are markedly below those of public rental housing, will become a long-term part of public housing. In that sense, isn’t it one step backwards not just from Tung’s “85,000 plan” but Lord MacLehose’s public housing programme?

In yet another move to trumpet the success of light public housing, housing minister Winnie Ho spoke at a moving-in ceremony of a light public housing project in Kowloon Bay early this month. Residents began moving into the project’s 148 flats on Choi Shek Lane, which used to be a school campus that had been left vacant for years.

With a total of 148 flats, the renovation project helps little to solve the housing problem of the estimated 108,000 subdivided flats households. The numbers speak for themselves. It raises questions about whether the site could be turned into better use, in particular public rental housing, benefiting more families on the queue.

The Choi Shek Lane site was one of the more than 100 school premises that have been left vacant for years.

That it became a showcase of the Lee team’s determination to end the plight of people who live in substandard housing contrasts oddly with the shining success of former officials such as Donald Liao in building decent homes for the people.

▌ [At Large] About the Author

Chris Yeung is a veteran journalist, a founder and chief writer of the now-disbanded CitizenNews; he now runs a daily news commentary channel on Youtube. He had formerly worked with the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Economic Journal.