HONG KONG - Sun Hung Kai Properties — Hong Kong’s biggest developer by market value — has joined in the push to ease the city’s acute housing problem by offering three plots of farmland in the New Territories to build transitional homes.
The property giant, controlled by the Kwok family, said on Friday that it would offer three sites — at Long Ping in Yuen Long, Kam Tin and Kwu Tong in Fan Ling — for the projects.
We hope to improve the living conditions of the grassroots through these projects, and there’ll be markets around those housing units to cater to the needs of the residents
Adam Kwok Kai-fai,
executive director of Sun Hung Kai Properties
The Tung Tau site, covering 300,000 square feet, will be leased to the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council for a nominal fee of HK$1 to yield 1,600 units, which are due to be completed by early 2022.
SHKP is seeking other partners to run the two other projects at Kam Tin and Kwu Tong, covering a total area of 100,000 square feet. On completion, the three projects are expected to house a total of 6,000 families.
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“We hope to improve the living conditions of the grassroots through these projects, and there’ll be markets around those housing units to cater to the needs of the residents,” SHKP Executive Director Adam Kwok Kai-fai said.
SHKP is the latest private developer in Hong Kong to offer land to help resolve the city’s chronic housing shortage. Last year, Wheelock Properties, New World Development and Henderson Land Development also pledged to offer some of their agricultural land reserves to expedite the construction of public housing flats.
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On Friday, CK Asset Holdings said it would study using farmland for housing development, although cautioned that transforming such land for housing may take a “relatively long time” to benefit those in need.
The SAR government pledged in October last year to allocate HK$5 billion (US$641 million) — up from the previous HK$2 billion — for the construction of 10,000 transitional housing units within three years.
The target was set in Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s Policy Address to relieve the pressure of families living in squalid conditions, as well as those in the long queue for public rental housing.
