Launched by the British Hong Kong colonial government in 1972, a 10-year plan to build public housing for the needy in the aftermath of a massive blaze at the Shek Kei Mei squatters that made 53,000 people homeless is a landmark event in the story of Hong Kong success.

The success in providing affordable homes for low-income people has exemplified the can-do spirit, determination and courage, competence and farsightedness of the Government and the people of Hong Kong.

The shining success of Hong Kong’s public housing became an embarrassing story to the post-handover administration. The longstanding government pledge of three-year average waiting time for a public housing flat for a household has turned sour with the queue of housing aspirants kept lengthening and the average waiting time almost doubled.

More damningly, the number of cage homes and subdivided flats, described by the South China Morning Post as “shoebox housing”, stood at a high level. The Government said last year there were an estimated 110,000 subdivided flats, housing more than 220,000 people. The units ranging from 20 sq ft to 200 sq ft were notorious for their poor hygiene and conditions and fire and security hazards.

The dismal failure of the previous administrations in providing a decent home to the low-income people made a mockery of the pledge made by President Xi Jinping to bring common prosperity to all people as the nation grew stronger. Understandably, the patience of Beijing leaders wore thin. In a speech delivered on a July 1 anniversary ceremony held in the city last year, Xi has highlighted housing as a problem that needed to be resolved.

Three months later, Chief Executive John Lee rolled out a new temporary housing programme to build about 30,000 flats by 2027 for those waiting for permanent public rental homes. Officially known as the “light public housing” scheme, housing minister Winnie Ho has described it as a “lifeboat” for those who badly needed a decent living space.

Despite a string of doubts and questions about the rationality, cost-effectiveness and sites of the housing plan, the first phase of the project was approved by a vote of 34 to zero by members at a subcommittee of the Legislative Council on Wednesday.

The overwhelming approval of the scheme contrasts sharply and oddly with the lingering doubts about the temporary housing programme. Officially, the 30,000-unit plan is estimated to cost a total of HK$26.4 billion. Critics have raised questions about unpublicised spendings on the supervision, administration and maintenance of the units in the future.

If the “lifeboat” housing plan has testified the city’s housing fiasco in the past decade, the lingering controversy ranged from its rationality, cost and selection of sites is indicative of the sharp decline of the quality of the city’s policy-making and governance and, also importantly, the distressing socio-political atmosphere.

Shiu Sin-por, head of the now-disbanded Central Policy Unit under Leung Chun-ying administration, may sound an unlikely critic of the “light public housing” programme, which is the first major initiative by the John Lee government aimed to help end the plight of families who live in substandard flats.

But his salvos against the wide gulf between the cost and the effectiveness of the multi-billion-dollar plan hit the nail on its head when it comes to rational policy-making. He argued that the money to spend is disproportionate to what the programme can achieve. “(It’s) absolutely irrational.”

Shiu’s argument is no rocket science theory, but simple ABC in public policy-making for any government being accountable to the people when exercising their power and allocating resources.

But the “ABCs” are notably being forgotten, if not ignored, in the making of the “lifeboat” housing plan.

It is worth recapping the fact that housing chief Winnie Ho likened the plan as “lifeboat” after she failed to win the argument with facts and data. This is simply because “light public housing” is no cheaper, or probably even more expensive, than traditional public housing.

As Shiu has observed, the Government can only appeal to “emotions” when it fails to win public support through rational argument.

The way the Lee team has adopted to secure passage of the “light public housing”plan including cost-benefit analysis and consensus-building through consultation is uncharacteristic of the rational policy-making in the pre- and post-handover governments.

True, scenes of tens of thousands of people still living in cage homes and dilapidated subdivided flats in 2023 Hong Kong are saddening and politically embarrassing.

The Government should not be blamed for doubling their efforts to give them a decent home. But that does not mean the basics of rationality, common sense and reasonable use of financial resources should be abandoned at the risk of causing profound harm to good governance.

▌[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.