TNAG-1575-FCO40-2148-Housing-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 22

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DRAFT SPEECH BY HON K C CHAN, OBE, JP

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 29.10.86

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Adjournment Debate on the

"Report of the Committee on Housing Subsidy to Tenants of Public Housing" and the "Report of the Domestic Rent Policy Review Committee"

Sir,

I rise to support in principle the Reports on "Housing Subsidy to Tenants of Public Housing" and "Domestic Rent Policy

Review".

The original aim of public housing was to "provide suitable accommodation for as many as possible of those people who are living in over-crowded or otherwise unsatisfactory conditions and cannot afford to pay the rent for comparable accommodation in the open market" (HK Report for 1970 page 124).

Let us take suitable accommodation, if one compares the recent models of public housing to private Chinese tenement flats, one would find the open space and communal facilities far superior in public housing.

As to "as many as possible" people, some 2.4 million people or 45% of our population are living in public housing.

As to comparable rent, it is much cheaper than private housing, otherwise there will not be a long queue for public

housing.

In the debate on 25th May 1983 in this Council on the Landlord and Tenant (Consolidation) (Amendment) Bill 1983, I stated that "to achieve total rent decontrol we should first look into their housing need. We should get all those well-off tenants or absentee tenants out of public housing into home ownership or private housing and let the people in the queue of under-privileged applicants who cannot afford private housing to take up the vacancies thus created. We should not make life tenancies in public

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