ABSTRACT
Newcomers to East Asia – the small conglomerate of fast-growing economies of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, with Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam eventually joining the circle – are often impressed by two highly visible urban phenomena. First is the massive high-rise urban residential environment and, second, the dominance of what I call “the language of housing” – rollercoaster property prices, people making and losing money in the housing market, urban dream homes in jam-packed high-rises, affordability problems and government failures to provide adequate housing for the poor. The first phenomenon is understandable, as in the case of Hong Kong where nearly seven million people squeeze themselves onto 50 square kilometres of land, making it one of the world’s most congested metropolises. The second phenomenon is more unique to this region and particularly to Hong Kong. The “language of housing” is ubiquitous in traditional tea houses, coffee shops, family gatherings and, invariably, the media. This stems from a common belief that home ownership is always wealthgenerating; that, at some point in life, one must become a homeowner; and that owner-occupation not only satisfies one’s residential needs but also provides the cultural capital to transcend one’s social class (Lee, 1999). As such, the question is not whether one should get into home ownership as a tenure choice, but how, when and where. The time of entry into and exit from the housing market in some cases is seen as a determinant of the level of a household’s gain and loss (Forrest and Lee, 2004).
