The transferability of housing voucher system in Hong Kong

Abstract

This dissertation is about the use of in-cash housing subsidy, in the form of housing voucher, to deliver housing welfare in Hong Kong. This type of subsidy is currently the major type of housing assistance implemented in the United States since 1970s for improving the deteriorating public housing stock as well as the concentrated poverty and racial segregated neighbourhoods developed in the public housing projects. As a foreign policy, the research has taken the academic approach of policy transfer to assess the possibility of importing this American programme for domestic use.

Housing subsidies exist in two forms, namely supply side (producer-based, in-kind) subsidy or demand side (consumer-based, in-cash) subsidy. The former refers to the direct construction of social housing by the government or private sector project facilitated by the government via financial incentives, such as construction grants or tax concessions. Hong Kong public housing is using this kind of provision. As for demand side subsidy, the beneficiaries receive financial support from the government in order to enhance the recipients’ affordability in housing. As far as renting is concerned, such kind of consumer subsidy can be rental allowance payable in cash or housing voucher redeemable by the landlord. The American Housing Choice Voucher Program is a prominent example. In 2001, the Hong Kong Housing Authority has also implemented a trial policy on disseminating rental allowances to eligible elderly public housing tenants but was called off later. If the program worked satisfactorily, the government would consider extending this policy to ordinary applicants of public housing as well. In-kind housing welfare is provided through administrative assignment, the prospective tenants cannot choose which area to reside and their choices on housing units are very restrictive. Since housing location will influence a person’s access to job, education and other chances of life, consumer based housing subsidy allows beneficiary to exercise greater freedom of choice in housing.

Policy transfer is about borrowing foreign policy tools or measures for domestic use to solve problems of similar nature. It is a process by which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system. In evaluating the implementation of housing voucher in Hong Kong, this dissertation using policy transfer theorists’ multi-level approach in evaluating the macro and micro settings of the policy framework. The macro level will look upon the political, social and economic contexts between U.S. and Hong Kong that embed public housing policy, while the micro level is an examination of the responses of selected actors in policy transfer that facilitate or hinder the transfer. Upon the research findings, both the macro and micro level analyses lead to the conclusion that the transferability of housing voucher system in Hong Kong is relatively low.