CNN Asks HK: Can 40,000 Empty Quarantine Units Be Used For Housing?

Behind the gleaming skyscrapers and multimillion-dollar homes that have made Hong Kong the world’s most expensive property market lies a far less attractive parallel reality-- one of the world’s seemingly most intractable housing crises-- where the average home sells for well north of a million dollars – and even a parking space can go for close to a million – but where more than 200,000 people face waits of at least half a decade for subsidized public housing, Kathleen Magramo reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: Many are now calling on authorities to repurpose the COVID quarantine camps the city built during the pandemic which currently lie empty.

Where far below the billionaire’s row of The Peak and its ultra-exclusive properties that routinely change hands for hundreds of millions of dollars, one in five people lives below the poverty line – defined in Hong Kong as 50% of the median monthly household income before welfare – and many call home a cramped subdivided unit or even a cage in a dilapidated tenement block.

The cause of the problem, according to the city’s government, is simple: a chronic lack of supply to meet the demand of more than 7 million residents crammed into what are already some of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods.

Housing “tops the agenda,” the city’s chief executive John Lee insisted in his maiden policy address in October, as he pledged to build 30,000 units in the next five years – a promise that follows an order by the central government in Beijing to prioritize the issue.

But critics have long been skeptical of the reliance on land premiums, sales and taxes, which account for roughly 20% of its annual revenues. This income stream provides an incentive for it to keep supply tight, limiting what can be done to solve the problem.

Many are now calling on authorities to repurpose the COVID quarantine camps the city built during the pandemic which currently lie empty.

Public housing plans are usually subject to years of red tape, but in the case of the camps, government managed to suddenly “find” around 80 hectares of land and build 40,000 pre-fabricated metal units in a matter of months.

CNN has asked Hong Kong what it plans to do with the camps. It said it would announce its plans “after a decision is made.” Only three out of the eight purpose-built quarantine and isolation camps have actually been used.

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