Hong Kong Housing Problem - Subsidized Housing Policy

Due to high property price in Hong Kong, many citizens are not able to buy their flats. Some people suggest that the government should implement policies to help them while the others advocate that the government should not interfere with the market operation.

In my opinion, the government should try to provide helps to them. This is because it is the government's responsibility to solve citizens' housing problems.

Topic Sentence:

Brief introduction of Hong Kong government's subsidized housing policies.

In Hong Kong, there are mainly two major subsidized housing policies, including Public Rental Housing (PRH) and Home Ownership Scheme (HOS).

Public housing usually refers to flats owned by the government and rented to low income families with low rentals. According to HKHA (2010), about one fourth of the citizens in Hong Kong are now living in PRH.

The public housing issue in Hong Kong is often being discussed together with the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS, a kind of subsidized housing policy to help citizens to buy flats). In 2003, the Housing Authority decided to suspend the HOS flats production (HKHA, 2006).

Topic Sentence:

The government should increase the level of support to citizens.

For small and medium flats, both the prices and the rentals have increased for about 20% during the period July 2009- July 2010 (HKRVD, 2010), while for the same period of time, the Gross National Product (GNP) increased for 4.6% only (HKCSD, 2010). For such reason, we can see that the housing expenses keep increasing the burden of citizens.

The government may try to resume the Home Ownership Scheme. This act is to increase the supply of subsidized flats (especially for small and medium sized flats) which most of the people can afford to buy it. This measure is strongly supported by most of the Legislative Councilors (LegCo, 2009 a) (LegCo, 2009 b).

Moreover, the government may try to provide loans to help people buying their own flats. For example, the former Home Assistance Loan Scheme (HALS) provides financial supports to citizens who are buying their first flat (HKHA, 2007).

Topic Sentence:

Ways that other countries solve the housing problem.

In Singapore, more than 80% of the people are living in HDB flats (a kind of public housing) and 95% of them own it (HDB, 2010). The Singapore government provides various kinds of financial supports, such as loans and subsidies, to citizens to buy the subsidized HDB flats (Chew, V., 2009).

In Australia, both the federal and state governments are responsible for providing public housing. For example, the State of New