Chasing housing dream, not lying flat

The phenomenon of young adults applying for public housing seems to have caused such alarm that officials from Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu down to Housing Authority member Anthony Chiu Kwok-wai could wait no longer to criticize them.

The chief executive urged them to chase dreams rather than public housing.

Senior officials, including Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin and Director of Housing Rosanna Law Shuk-pui, accused them of "lying flat," blaming them for giving up on themselves for the sake of staying below the income and asset caps set for public housing.

To be eligible, a single applicant must earn no more than HK$12,940 a month and own no more than HK$286,000 in assets.

Further to that, the wait could be extremely long - almost 30 years - if a young person applied to the authority for public housing at the start of adulthood.

What is the current situation?

According to the Housing Department, there were 38,000 such applicants in 2022 - and the number had once been as high as 66,500 in 2017.

It is clear that even applicants who are young and single know it is a no-through road that will lead them to a dead end. If the housing director had bothered to do a further survey, she may have discovered that the figure might have changed further.

Although it cannot be ruled out that some young people did give up opportunities at work in order to remain in the public housing queue, the number is likely to be small.

Most would not be so stupid to decline a job promotion and pay rises in exchange for an unrealistic dream that would mean waiting 29 or 30 years for an uncertain outcome.

In this respect, the concern that most young people would "lie flat" for public housing is more hypothetical than real. That said, it is still an interesting phenomenon.

To a large extent, it confirms what everyone already knows: private housing is expensive, whether rented or owned.

Ho's suggestion that the 70-30 public rental to subsidized housing ratio may be adjusted to increase subsidized housing for ownership would help accelerate the correction now taking place in the property market.

More often than not, it is the parents reminding children to apply first as soon as they are old enough.

It is understandable as parents know what life can be like and they think it would be a harmless bet to apply first for public housing.

I have heard such a story from a reliable source. A mother urged her son to submit an application to join the public housing queue as soon as he returned from overseas study in the UK.

The young man has advanced so much at work that his earnings have already been well above the limit for some time.

Perhaps Law would have also eliminated some numbers from the queue had applicants still on the waiting list been asked to update their current income.

The phenomenon is believed to be temporary and tied to the property market situation.

As property prices continue to fall to a level that is affordable to more people, things will start adjusting themselves and young people in general will again aspire to own a home rather than living in public housing.