A study on the fairness of alienation restrictions of the home ownership scheme

Abstract

Housing has been a deep-rooted issue for centuries in Hong Kong. Over the past decades, the Government has been rolling out a series of subsidised housing initiatives to provide assistance to citizens. The Home Ownership Scheme (HOS), launched in 1976, is the most important subsidised housing initiative, providing affordable accommodation to more than 10% of the households in Hong Kong. Given the skyrocketing property prices in the private housing market, there is an acute demand for HOS flats. At the same time, recent years have witnessed cases of speculations on Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) units, making millions of profits. This paper aims at investigating the alienation restrictions currently in force in HOS flats. Unlike other studies, this paper investigates the fairness of the current alienation restrictions through interviews with members of the Housing Authority, District Council Member, scholar, and HOS residents, as well as online questionnaires to HOS residents. This could provide another angle for the evaluation of the HOS. The views and opinions received from interviews and questionnaires suggest that most stakeholders and HOS residents consider the alienation restrictions unfair, due to recent speculations of HOS and the premium arrangement. Upon receiving the opinions, recommendations are raised to improve the current alienation restrictions to enhance the fairness of the restrictions.