Community Housing Movement – A Light In The Darkness Of Housing Shortage

It’s undeniable that Hong Kong is a densely populated international city with strictly limited land space, makes the shortage of the affordable housing always a serious problem. However, we have realized this problem for nearly 20 years, but the issue of housing shortage is still no any signs of improvements seen, in contrast, more serious. The main reason is that we still do not find an effective transition program. There are many voice of building more public housing, but it’s not easy to open enough space to build new public housing due to the limited land space of Hong Kong, also, even though suitable space has found, the construction work still requires at least 10 to 20 years until it’s available for in-take. The new increasing population in the next few decades will be far more than 30 million people. This continuous population increase causes many and many people need to live in subdivided units, with very vile, narrow, dirty and unsafe living conditions, for a long period until they queue to in-take the public house. So many grassroots suffer and being physically and mentally tortured because of the very poor living condition in subdivided flats.

As a normal citizen who cares our society, I am very pledge to see the Community Housing Movement, a new initiative launched by HKCSS to provide transition social housing to the grassroots. As the community housing is a very fresh thing in Hong Kong, I noticed our society contains vary reactions, while some considered this initiative as a remedy for the poor housing conditions, others criticized it as legalization of subdivided flat, an inhumane solution to housing problems. But I personally think it’s a light in the darkness of housing shortage problem, a new hope we must have trial.

Community Housing is not legalized subdivided flatI don’t know why some people criticized the community housing as “legalization of subdivided flat” or “conscientious subdivided unit”. Just go to the HKCSS website and search anything about community housing. The community housing initiative will not using flats inconsistent with legal requirements, such as illegal subdivided flats, any units with poor condition which carry out improvement works required under the Fire Safety Directions and/or Fire Safety Improvement Directions, or orders from Buildings Department. Also, the initiative will try not modifying the original gaps of the units, even though some traditional Chinese building not includes any gaps, the HKCSS will also follow the regulations of Buildings Department and make sure the per capital living space not less than 7 m3 when they do the unit separation works. I have saw some photos took from the community housing initiative of HKCSS, the living conditions of these flats of community housing are totally different from the illegal subdivided flats. A typical community housing unit comprises of enough activity space, comfortable lighting, good ventilation design, fulfilling safe regulations, and the restrooms, bathrooms and kitchens which meet the hygienic requirements.

To put it simple, a community housing unit is just a big flat separated into more smaller units to hold more grassroots queueing for public housing, but these separated smaller units fulfill the legal safe and hygienic requirements and enough living space, comfortable lighting and ventilation design, safety and complete daily life facilities, and the relatively ornate decoration making the units looks like gorgeous home, and finally, of course, providing affordable lending price to these grassroots. There is no any comparison with the very disgusting, cramped, filthy and unsafe illegal subdivided units. I still believe those grassroots will prefer these new-type community housing to those hellish illegal subdivided flats. Are Community Housing Program sustainable? I believe all the successful policies need to achieve the sustainable development. The definition of sustainable development is meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

To achieve the sustainable development, it is important to harmonize three core aspects: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. These three aspects are interconnected and all three are crucial for the well-being of individuals and societies. I think the problem of housing shortage is closely related to sustainable development in Hong Kong. Since the baby boomer after second world war, from the early squatter area to today’s public housing, Hong Kong people and government keep fighting to improve citizen’s living quality unstoppable. Both citizens and government know the well housing for all citizens is the key of social harmony. However, since the handover in 1997, our government have got blind faith on the estate industry for economic boost, causes many greedy estate developers to control the land price and it makes many normal citizens, retailers and shop owners grudge every day because of the high leasing price.

We got economic growth since our government encouraged the estate industry and discouraged the public housing, but the social cost is heavy since we sacrifice the social well-being of the major normal citizen, shop owners and other industry. When the price of private housing is so high, the voice of building more public housing are reasonably growing. Due to the limited space in Hong Kong, our government need to consider ways to increase land space, which unavoidably give bad impacts to our environment, such as landfill and mountain digging, which sometimes that place are very high value of natural conversation. I believe most of Hong Kong people like me realize that we must change, because we have enough. The Community Housing program launched by HKCSS is a best hope in line with the actual situation to solve this problem. The normal people will very hard to imagine how strong a person are influenced when he or she chronically live on a poor and vile subdivided unit. Living in harsh and expensive mortuary, citizens are very helpless. Inhumane housing has a huge negative impact on households. It affects work and family relationships, social and physical well-being, as well as psychological and spiritual qualities. Children will especially experience negative stigma as they grow.

Since the Community Housing program are well accepted by the public, many and many grassroots now can say goodbye to the hellish illegal subdivided units, and move into these new type community housing. Because the living condition of community housing are totally improved, the grassroots will feel more safe and happy, and less helpless and hopeless. The improvement of psychological and spiritual qualities can help them improve their work efficiency, family relationships, social and physical well-being too. But I think introducing community housing does not only benefit the grassroots who queueing for public housing, but also our complete society according to the principle of sustainable development. When the grassroots can now live on these well-quality community housing, the citizens will feel more safe and happy, the complaints from society will be reduced beneficial for social harmony. Also, because the improvement of physical and mental qualities of grassroots, their work efficiency and working performance are both improved. Therefore, it’s beneficial to our economic development due to the increasing well social workforce. Also, the improvement of physical and spiritual health can give the grassroots more positive motivation to learning new skills and engaging in advanced studies beneficial for them to improve their financial situation and living quality. It’s an advantage for proving society with more high-quality population and healthy economic growth. Also, the public pressure of building more public housing can be eased since the grassroots have well transit residences with satisfactory living condition. The government can stop radical construction plan of public housing, so the impact to our environment due to the necessary digging cave or reclamation can be reduced too. To do a small summarize, although the community housing program is only a transition residence program for grassroots, but it does not stop this program beneficial to our social well-being, economic development and environmental protection. Why we should not strongly support this great initiative?

Outlook of Community Housing

Of course, I don’t deny that there are still many concerns still need solution as the community housing are fresh thing in Hong Kong. The main barricade of promoting transition social housing in Hong Kong is to make sure the supply fulfills massive grassroots who queueing for public housing. The first phase of the community housing plan is to provide at least 500 suitable units estimated that 1, 000 households will benefit. Luckily, the process of first phase looks optimism. The HKCSS have initially received 332 potential flats provided by 26 estate owners. Investigation will be arranged as soon as possible to determine whether the flats are eligible to participate in the scheme. At least 34 units are expected to be launched by the end of this year. The remaining suitable units after the survey and decoration will be launched in early next year. However, although it’s a good start, I think only 500 units are still not enough for massive grassroots citizens who queueing for public housing. We should not only depend on refurbishment of the existed flats, we should consider introducing some new technologies which can provide more considerable units in a short period of time for meeting the demand of massive grassroots who queueing for public housing. But luckily, the technological progression on construction can solve this annoyance. Transitional social housing operated by social service agencies or social enterprises in European countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium has been popularizing the use of prefabricated housing estates and can step up efforts to increase the number of social housing in a relatively short period of time.

The pilot project of this community housing program is to release idle or unused residential resources in the community and try to provide affordable social housing on a large scale. At the same time, HKCSS also actively think about how to make use of prefabricated mixed-use housing technologies to provide idle and suitable urban areas with relatively suitable and affordable transitional housing for the grassroots with the needs of transitional housing. Based on the opinions of many experts, prefabricated house building has become increasingly popular and popular in foreign countries due to its estimated useful life of up to 50 years, it has been applied to the construction of permanent buildings.

Apart from being quicker to build than the traditional method of building a home, the building process of prefabricated housing has less damage to the surrounding environment. For example, water usage is significantly reduced compared to the common method of building in Hong Kong. Other interior facilities, including kitchen furniture and toilets, can be pre-assembled at the factory, shipping to the site, save money and time. Such houses are also designed to be removable, handled and reorganized for use as a transitional home. It’s pledged to see the technology of prefabricated housing estates can be introduced into Hong Kong. I think it’s not only beneficial for building relatively massive community housing units at the short period, but this new technology also have heavy potential for public housing in Hong Kong which beneficial for solving the housing stress problem in Hong Kong.

Conclusion

To summarize, although there is still a long way to go for solving the problem of housing shortage in Hong Kong, for example, increase the construction of public housing, Settling asset value-added tax, property vacancy tax and hoarding tax to curb the incentive for investors to hold property in large numbers in anticipation of appreciation, thereby reducing the driving force of property prices and rent increases, and long-term policy of population control. However, water afar off quenches not fire. Again, this is not the problem of what we don’t have any long-term solution, but the problem of massive existed grassroots who living in hellish illegal subdivided flats before they are queueing into public housing. I believe the community housing program does not only give hope to massive grassroots, but also meet the principles of sustainable development, and the most crucially, it can provide a very inspiring encouragement to really solve the housing shortage problem in Hong Kong. I can’t find any reason why we should not support this community housing initiative.