Para 8: Comparison with Singapore is not new, and is
usually made in ignorance of the different methods of financing public housing in Singapore and in Hong Kong. However, as regards the building up of a stable middle class etc., the general trend towards owner occupation in the private sector is upwards (over 70% of new flats built are owner-occupied), and in the public sector the launching of the HOS scheme has been warmly received.
Para 9: Miss Lee quotes the FS but apparently does not
understand what he is saying, which is that the HA should endeavour to meet its legal obligation to cover recurrent expenditure in order that its borrowings can be confined to loans for non- recurrent expenditure i.e. on new estates. Under the present financial arrangements the Government makes land available to the HA at no cost, and provides interest free loans from the Development Loan Fund repayable over 40 years, to finance the building programme. The value of the land, and a notional 5% P.a. interest on the reducing balance of loans are written into the HA'S accounts to demonstrate the size of Government's contribution. This point is evidently lost on Miss Lee.
Para 10: The figures quoted are accurate but relate purely
to recurrent expenditure. As stated above Miss Lee does not understand (or chooses not to) the financial arrangements for the building programme. However, confining the argument to the cross subsidy between Groups A and B on the Estate Working Account, Miss Lee presumably would be the first to object to any attempt to raise Group B estate rents to a level at which they covered even recurrent costs.
Para 11: I don't know why Miss Lee and some others object
to Housing being classified as a Social Service a rose by any other name? (Social work groups when pressing for more to be spent on housing refer to its need for priority in the social programmes.) Miss Lee is apparently unaware that it is Government policy that nobody be rendered homeless as a result of squatter control. That said, squatter clearances are never pleasant, and the man who has paid a racketeer for an illegal hut only to find himself in a Transit Centre is unlikely to feel kindly towards those who make him move from the hut. (You know the answers to this sort of criticism, firsthand.)
Para 12: The same comments apply here as to para 8.
Miss Lee
hasn't done her homework on the Private Sector Participation Scheme (2 estates now under construction) under which private developers tender for land on which flats, similar to the Home Ownership flats will be built and sold to families eligible under the Home Ownership Scheme.
/Para 13
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