The Poverty Line and the Value of Public Rental Housing Subsidies to the Poor

2017 ◽  
pp. 61-65
Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

There is one very simple and costless way to alleviate poverty in one fell swoop. All one has to do is to transfer full private ownership rights of the public housing units to the occupying tenant free of charge. . … This would, according to the government study, lift 600,000 households in public rental housing above the poverty line. This would have been the best Christmas gift the Poverty Commission could bestow on the poor people in Hong Kong on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the Shek Kip Mei Fire.


Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

Hong Kong’s public housing estates are transforming into areas of growing poverty, with more divorced households. They are increasingly weak neighborhoods for motivating children to higher aspirations. There are doubts about the wisdom of continuing the development of more public rental housing units to solve our shortage of housing units. A far better solution is to build subsidized homes for ownership so that families have a stake to stay together and work for a better future. By keeping families together, more children will be prevented from falling into a state of disadvantage that will be detrimental to their future upward social mobility. Why foster and concentrate the poor and the divorced in publicly subsidized ghettos? Poor children deserve a better deal. A city of homeowners is also less politically divided.


2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-744
Author(s):  
Sang-Bong KIM ◽  
Ki-Sik HWANG ◽  
Rok RYU

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