ABSTRACT
Welfare housing, whether in the form of rental housing or homeownership, such as the subsidized housing programme in Hong Kong, the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS), has always been a topical issue in the academic world. In Hong Kong, developers and private homeowners paid very little attention to the welfare housing sector before 1997, even though approximately half of the population lives in welfare housing in the city. After 1997, welfare housing suddenly became a very controversial issue, especially the HOS projects. Developers and private homeowners blamed HOS projects for dragging down the property price level between 1998 to 2003. On the other hand, most people tend to agree that welfare rental housing should be retained or even expanded as this is part of the welfare safety net. What we find interesting is that while some political parties in Hong Kong support this notion of expanding public rental housing and resurrecting the HOS scheme after it was suspended in 2002 by the Hong Kong government due to various reasons, these very same political parties also object to the government’s plan to build public rental housing near the private housing community! We therefore cannot help but think: What damage can public housing do to our private housing market? In this chapter, we hope to unfold this mystery by examining whether and how public housing impacts on the neighbouring private housing community.
