TNAG-0669-FCO40-818-Policy-on-housing-and-resettlement-in-Hong-Kong-1977 — Page 28

VOL 7, NO 2

HOUSING AUTHORITY'S DISCRETION

221

Despite these favourable comparisons with overseas jurisdictions, however, it is submitted that the present system of appeals in Hong Kong before a committee of the Housing Authority is unsatisfactory. Although section 7(2) of the Housing Ordinance ensures that one of the members of the committee hearing an appeal must not be a member of the Authority, the majority of the committee will be members. Regardless of the truth of the matter, this will inevitably give rise to the suspicion amongst individual tenants involved in appeals and to a lesser extent amongst public housing tenants at large that the committee is not impartial and in most cases simply upholds the administrative decisions of the Authority. The existence of one non-member of the Authority on the committee is insufficient to dispel such a suspicion. These doubts are not only damaging to the status of the committee, but help to create bad relations between the authority and its tenants. The fact that an objective analysis of the past practices of the committee would show that it is unbiased is not an answer to this problem; justice must be seen to be done.

Thus, alternatives to the present internal administrative review system of the Authority need to be examined. The establishment of a system of judicial review would be possible, but would suffer from a number of defects: for many tenants the costs would be prohibitive; the judiciary would lack a detailed knowledge of the role of the Authority and the housing problems of its tenants; and the inevitable delays would not only deter tenants from challenging decisions of the Authority but might also impede the smooth functioning of the property management and applications and allocations sections of the Authority's estate management branch.

It is suggested that a system of external administrative review would be a more satisfactory alternative both to the present system and to judicial review. Perhaps the most widely publicised form of external administrative review in the sphere of public housing is that of Michigan, where since 1968 each city with a population exceeding one million has had a Board of Tenant Affairs, one-half of whose members are elected by tenants in public housing and the remainder chosen by the local major with the approval of the municipal legislature. The board's functions are to advise the Housing Commission on tenant matters, to review rules made by the Housing Commission, to act as a board of review on appeals from adverse determinations on prospective tenants' requests for admission to public housing,