Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF) has launched the fourth report of its "Land and Housing Policy Advocacy” series, “Hanging on the Housing Supply Cliff: Are There More Bandages Around?”. We address the housing crisis faced by the city, towards which public attention has waned in recent months despite its persistent severity. Unfortunately, OHKF’s updated forecasts show that the worst is yet to come.

A continual depletion of the city's land bank means that sharp drops will be seen in both private and public housing supply in a few years' time. Our average annual private housing supply forecast for 2019-2023 has been adjusted downwards by 11% compared to our previous rolling five-year forecast for 2018-2022. In particular, completions in 2023 is forecast to drop to only 13,300 units, nearly 40% lower than the corresponding figure in 2018.

For the next four years, public housing supply is forecast to be 10% lower compared to the previous rolling four years. We expect the Government’s target of 31,500 units per year to be missed by a large shortfall of 42%. Over a 10-year horizon, we expect a cumulative shortfall of 85,000 units. We also expect the general applicants’ average waiting time for public rental housing to exceed 6 years in three years’ time.

In view of the significant shortfalls in public housing in the next 10 years, we urge the Government and society-at-large to speed up all land rezoning efforts, which is the main source of land supply in the short-to-medium term. We examined the potential rezoning sites demarcated by the Government in detail and prioritised different sites based on their difficulty-levels regarding the rezoning process.

OHKF also covers the issue of "brownfield" sites as important economic ancillary land to Hong Kong, and call for a comprehensive review by the Government for the current and future demand of land to facilitate the trading and logistics industry.