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Executive Summary

Streamline procedures to accelerate No matter it is large-scale land development or public housing
housing supply construction, past development projects in Hong Kong have been
trapped in a vicious cycle—projects get delayed due to slow progress,
followed by toilsome efforts to catch up on back-loaded delivery.
Hong Kong people are known to have unwavering endurance. Still, Taking the ten-year public housing supply projection as an example.
having to endure a cramped, expensive and densely populated living Early in 2015, the Government had already clearly stated that housing
environment for so long, people will eventually reach their limits and supply will be back-loaded in the Long Term Housing Strategy (LTHS)
lose hope for the future. annual progress report. Yet in 2021, i.e. five years had passed since
In the past, we have made recommendations in various research 2015, the Policy Address still stated that housing supply in the next
reports on boosting land and housing supply. By focusing on 10 years will continue to be back-loaded.
large-scale land development to solve the supply problems, our There is plenty of room to streamline and reorganise the current
recommendations include the Enhanced East Lantau Metropolis and development process. Various non-governmental professional
large-scale urbanisation in the New Territories. Since then, these organisations, including Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF), have
recommendations have been adopted by the Hong Kong Special raised many suggestions. However, the Government remains largely
Administrative Region Government (the Government) for the Lantau unresponsive, and its reform efforts are far from sufficient. On the other
Tomorrow Vision and the Northern Metropolis respectively. However, hand, the suggestions put forward by various parties are rather
even if these regional projects are eventually implemented, following the fragmented, which are mostly focused on the individual aspects of land
existing land development procedures, they will be long-term supply in development and housing construction. A consolidated proposal that
20 to 30 years. It is possible that the current procedures will cause the integrates all suggestions and covers the entire land and housing
regional projects to degenerate into paper talk, which will not save the development flow is still lacking. Therefore, if the Government is to
people from their current plight. Nevertheless, the Government is not truly remove the barriers in order to provide housing amply and swiftly,
taking action to solve the supply problem in short-term. its actions to date are far from being adequate.

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