Dear Fellow Citizens of Hong Kong,




Hong Kong is undergoing the grimmest hours since the handover. The community beholds widespread conflicts and violence day in day out. What’s more, it saddens my heart to see that the rule of law and the stability being jeopardized, society seriously divided, and the generation gap being further widened. These, coupled with the impacts of the China-US trade war and the Brexit, the issuing of travel warnings against Hong Kong by various countries, the downgrading of credit ratings of Hong Kong, each and every business and the livelihood of people of all levels are being seriously affected.
 
These problems are in fact longstanding and deep-rooted, and have arisen from the shortage of land and housing, the deceleration of growth of the economy, the soaring rent and price of private housing, the widening of wealth disparity, the limited opportunity for upward social mobility, plus aging population, mismatch of insufficient work force, education and youth issues. Unfortunately, they have not been properly dealt with over the past years, and thus have culminated in much social discontent and the current outbreak.
 
“Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” were being advocated by some of the young and radical protestors, would not be solutions to problems we are facing. Hong Kong does not need and cannot stand the consequence of revolution. But majority of us agree that Hong Kong needs “CHANGE”. “CHANGE” is also the main theme of the proposal I submitted earlier to the government regarding the Policy Address.
 
The Chief Executive, Mrs. Carrie Lam delivered her third Policy Address on October 16. The emphasis on adoption of "unconventional" approaches tallied with the “need for CHANGE” in my recommendations.
 
It has also adopted many of my proposals on housing, land, transport, urban planning, including the construction of more transitional housing, redevelopment of Housing Authority's factory buildings, assisting first-time home-buyers, streamlining the development approval process, speed up the building development of agricultural land and brownfield sites, develop new railway lines, extension of transport subsidies and exemption of various tunnel tolls, etc.
 
Whilst the Policy Address has demonstrated the CE’s strong determination to seek for change, some of the measures are however, apparently ineffective, as it lacks a timetable for implementation. In addition, the Policy Address has not addressed matters about the Government's organisation structure and governance practice. One would wonder whether these initiatives and policy measures could eventually be implemented as wished.
 
For example, I have always asked the Government to be aggressive in building more transitional housing, so as to relieve the rental pressure of some grassroot families, as well as to improve their living conditions. Although the government proposes that 10,000 more transitional housing units would be provided in the coming three years, whether or not the target could be achieved seems to be reliant much on the initiatives of the NGOs.
 
Besides, to invoke the Lands Resumption Ordinance to resume three types of private land for the construction of public housing, would depend heavily on resolving the complicated problems of planning, transport, infrastructure, compensation, relocation of clearees and operators of brownfield sites. Otherwise, the building of housing cannot be implemented in the short and medium term.
 
The Policy Address pledges to review the usage of more than 300 Government, Institute, Community (GIC) sites and the possibility of developing them on a "multiple use on single site” and mixed development principle. Whilst this is also in line with one of my proposals in the past years, regrettably a timetable is missing for the review, and there is no elaboration on how to overcome the prevalent “dog in the manger” phenomenon of the wasteful occupation of land by different policy bureaux and departments.
 
Regarding the proposal to raise the cap on the value of the properties under the Mortgage Insurance Programme of the HKMC Insurance Limited to assist first-time home buyers who have the ability to make monthly payments but cannot afford the huge down-payment upfront, some people doubted if the government wanted to boost up the market again, while overlooking the fact that in the past years such changes had only slightly offset the increase in property prices. I therefore once again urge the Government to consider providing full or partial mortgage premium assistance to first-time home-buyers who have successfully passed the stress-test.
 
The Policy Address suggested to study the provision of cash allowance for low-income households, which is de facto the regularization of rent allowance provided to “N-nothings” previously disbursed under the Community Care Fund.  However, no extra support of any kind has been mentioned for those “N-nothing” middle class who do not own any properties, without any benefit of housing or social welfare, while at the same time facing the enormous pressure in paying their rent checks.
 
Finally, in order to implement those changes effectively, the top priority would be ending the violence and reinstate the rule of law, as well as the stability and prosperity of the society. The community looks eagerly to the government to show us the way forward out of the current turmoil. It is disappointing that no new solutions have been provided in the Policy Address.
 
I hope the SAR government could display unconventional thinking, team spirit and execution capability in combating violence, instead of just relying on only one or two officials, a few bureaux and departments, and only one disciplinary force to tackle the problem.
 
Yours faithfully,
Tony