- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Time to Count the Social Cost of Uniting a People Divided
- 2 Setting the Scene
- 3 Supply and Demand Factors in Housing
- 4 On the Nature of Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong
- 5 Comparing Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong and Singapore
- 6 Equal Yet Unequal
- 7 The Inequity of Small Housing Units
- 8 Small Housing Units and High Property Prices
- 9 On Public Housing Policy and Social Justice
- 10 Economic and Social Consequences of Public Housing Policies
- 11 Demand for Homeownership and the Housing Ladder
- 12 How to Warm Up the HOS Secondary Market
- 13 Divorce, Remarriage, and the Long-Term Housing Strategy
- 14 Divorce, Inequality, Poverty, and the Vanishing Middle Class
- 15 The Impact of Global Economic Forces on Housing in Hong Kong
- 16 The Linked Rate, Domestic Stability, and Dual Integration
- 17 Reasons for Keeping the Linked Rate
- 18 Why Speculation Is Not a Bad Thing
- 19 Speculators, Property Agents, and the Spreading of Risk in the Presale Housing Market
- 20 How the Application List System Became the Winner’s Curse
- 21 Is There a High Land-Price Policy in Hong Kong?
- 22 Lima’s Other Path, Tsoi Yuen Village, and the Northeast New Territories
- 23 Stranded between Singapore’s Way and Lima’s Other Path
- 24 Subsidized Housing and Stability
- 25 Diversity and Occasional Anarchy
- 26 Population, Poverty, and the Triumph of the City
- 27 Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 1)
- 28 Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 2)
- 29 Conclusions and Reflections
- Epilogue
The Inequity of Small Housing Units
The Inequity of Small Housing Units
- Chapter:
- (p.47) 7 The Inequity of Small Housing Units
- Source:
- Hong Kong Land for Hong Kong People
- Author(s):
Yue Chim Richard Wong
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
How do we know the proportion of unsatisfied households is very large? The answer is in the inequity of the public housing program. The distribution of household income between public and private renters overlaps enormously. The housing demands of many public housing tenants cannot be substantially lower than those of private renters. Policymakers in Hong Kong simply fail to appreciate this absolutely important fact. Their ideas about public housing are based on gross misunderstanding. Since public housing tenants are not allowed to exercise choice over their housing units, the value they attach to their units must be lower than the true worth of their unit or its worth to another person. The only way you can get a well-off person to accept or tolerate a small unit is to offer a huge discount. The housing unit is only undervalued to the person who is occupying it. If a market exists and the occupant can rent out this unit to anyone on the market, its true value would be realized.
Keywords: Hong Kong, Housing, Housing policy, Public Housing, Politics, Social mobility, Population, Economics, Growth
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Time to Count the Social Cost of Uniting a People Divided
- 2 Setting the Scene
- 3 Supply and Demand Factors in Housing
- 4 On the Nature of Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong
- 5 Comparing Public Sector Housing Policies in Hong Kong and Singapore
- 6 Equal Yet Unequal
- 7 The Inequity of Small Housing Units
- 8 Small Housing Units and High Property Prices
- 9 On Public Housing Policy and Social Justice
- 10 Economic and Social Consequences of Public Housing Policies
- 11 Demand for Homeownership and the Housing Ladder
- 12 How to Warm Up the HOS Secondary Market
- 13 Divorce, Remarriage, and the Long-Term Housing Strategy
- 14 Divorce, Inequality, Poverty, and the Vanishing Middle Class
- 15 The Impact of Global Economic Forces on Housing in Hong Kong
- 16 The Linked Rate, Domestic Stability, and Dual Integration
- 17 Reasons for Keeping the Linked Rate
- 18 Why Speculation Is Not a Bad Thing
- 19 Speculators, Property Agents, and the Spreading of Risk in the Presale Housing Market
- 20 How the Application List System Became the Winner’s Curse
- 21 Is There a High Land-Price Policy in Hong Kong?
- 22 Lima’s Other Path, Tsoi Yuen Village, and the Northeast New Territories
- 23 Stranded between Singapore’s Way and Lima’s Other Path
- 24 Subsidized Housing and Stability
- 25 Diversity and Occasional Anarchy
- 26 Population, Poverty, and the Triumph of the City
- 27 Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 1)
- 28 Eighty Percent Homeownership (Part 2)
- 29 Conclusions and Reflections
- Epilogue
