The effectiveness of Hong Kong Housing Society in offering various building maintenance incentives for solving the urban decay problem

Abstract

Urban decay is among the most urgent problems in Hong Kong today. There are more than 3,000 blocks of building are considered sub-standard and 110,000 families are living in these homes. Despite the Government's immense effort in undertaking its own renewal projects for many years, Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) was the earlier urban renewal agent whom was invited by the Government to undertake redevelopment in the urban areas. In light of the rapid ageing of Hong Kong' building stock during the last two decades, HKHS has further assisted the Government with its own resources and expertise by implementing a 10-year maintenance incentive named "Building Management and Maintenance Scheme" (BMMS) since 2005. The BMMS aims at encouraging property owners to improve safety and hygiene of their living environment, it is administrated by HKHS with the provision of professional advice and financial assistance for publicizing proper building management and timely maintenance.

HKHS has exerted all its strength to promote the BMMS for seven years, the research is to gauge the effectiveness of HKHS for the achievement and shortcomings in the aspect of offering building maintenance incentives, particular in the launch of BMMS. The evaluation will focus on the three aspects, including the scheme performance, scheme design process and implementation process. An opinion survey was conducted in June 2012 for the data collection purpose and survey results correlates with the goals and objectives of the study are comprehensively discussed in Analysis I & II.

The findings show the effectiveness of HKHS in offering building maintenance incentives much depends on what stage does the scheme undergo, whilst the BMMS in general is operated effectively to address the problem of urban decay, with the exception of running it at the outset of the scheme design stage.

In the course of time, the recommendations pursuant to the weakness of the BMMS and the highlights in survey findings are drawn up at the end of the study, in order to make the building maintenance incentives more effectively in solving the urban decay problem.