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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

No, the alternative is to have the government build subsidized housing and then enact strict price controls so that even poor families can afford to live reasonably. That's how it was done in Singapore for example and is why they can live in "spacious" 30-70 m^2 apartments despite having a higher population density than Hong Kong. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore.

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Public housing or housing vouchers are one thing. Price controls are another. Price controls are absolutely, without a single empirical doubt, the worst policy you could enact. You might as well start torching your housing supply...the effects are the same.

Hyperbolic, but accurate when you've accounted for that.

Vouchers without controls drive up prices, becoming a transfer from govt to landlords.

Public owned housing is the answer.

Vouchers with artificial limitations on new development drive up prices, becoming a transfer from govt to landlords

Eliminating artificial limitations on new development is the answer.

48% of the HK population already live in government provided/subsidized housing, that's already very high.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Hong_Kong#Housing_st...

People are driven to these places by economic opportunities. They are not living in cages because they have nothing else to do, but because they want to live in Hong Kong, even much better conditions in mainland China is of no interest to them. This is like how people abandon their well built, fully paid out 3-bedroom apartments in mainland Russia and flock to Moscow where they share rooms with strangers, with 5-10 people living together in an apartment in their 30s. This isn't poverty, this is how people try to escape poverty. They cannot be helped to do it (otherwise more people will flock in - you can't move all China/all Russia to Hong Kong/Moscow), and should not be banned from trying (that kills economic progress, with Russians staying in Russian province means they will simply slowly die of vodka, in Moscow they might do something useful, i think same goes to Chinese).

Yes this. The HK govt is appalling in its disregard of the poverty line. (>6yrs in HK, and I'm no SG fanboy, but it is SO far beyond HK in this, there is just no comparison)

Can you quantify this? HK has one of the best welfare systems in the world.

I think the problem in HK is the number of undocumented immigrants. No papers, no open borders, surrounded mostly by water, these people are easy to exploit. I was told that many of the construction workers' (building skyscrapers) wages barely amount to the cost of the day's food.

It's sort of amazing the people in these conditions care enough about quality of work to build buildings that don't fall down.

Cough, ahem, well, it was also explained to me that there may be some systematic labor-related problems with construction quality in those buildings. Not exactly related to worker pay-rate, but the gist is that they tend to pour the concrete too wet (because it is easier/faster to work). This is probably because of productivity-based bonus pay for foremen. The difference in strength isn't enough to cause a building to fail under nominal conditions, but catastrophic failure is more probable in some destructive event (weather, earthquake, explosion, etc).

An agency colleague and I did volunteer design and marketing work for a Hong Kong food bank (St. James). At the time it was one of the few food banks in HK (I don't know if this has changed or not, but I'd be surprised if it has). Part of our initial work was research and I was pretty shocked that the HK govt didn't even set a national poverty line. Given a rough line of half median income, over a million HK residents were easily below at the time.

If you're talking strictly social security, even the government acknowledges it has a problem.

Here's a recent SCMP article where the welfare dept itself states that at least 40% of HK residents in poverty aren't covered by welfare.

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1062025/700000-sl...

(mirror: http://goo.gl/GxyTw )

The good news is that the HK govt did, finally, just implement a standard poverty line (half median income). This is the first step and a long time in coming.

I was in Singapore and now I'm living in HK. Reading that SG has higher density than HK made was surprising, because here in HK there are so many needle-like apartment buildings, but I didn't see that so much in SG.

I think the reason is that HK does have bigger area than SG but actually far less land is being used in HK (many hills), so practically speaking, the density is higher in HK :)

Is that really how it works in SG? I've been told housing prices are outrageous there and if you're too poor to afford public housing you get shipped off to the poor house and are not allowed to leave unless you can find someone to take responsibility for you.

Note: I've only visited SG so this is 2nd hand info through my friends in SG.

That's sort of how it works here. The Singaporean housing market is divided into HDB (public housing) and Condo (private housing). Condo's nowadays start at around SGD 1m for something small and basic, but aren't such a bad deal with banks charging interest of just 1.8% on a 40 year loan. Most Singaporeans can't afford this with an average monthly wage of just SGD 2,000 per month.

Public housing on the other hand is heavily subsidised and somewhat controlled for PRs and citizens. FYI Singapore was a giant slum up until the government formed the HDB board in the 1960s. The CPF (Singapore's retirement fund) can be used as a deposit against your apartment which nowadays start at SGD 300,000 if you go far from the city. As you can guess, this results in many people having a lot of cash tied up in non-liquid assets when they retire that leads to a host of other issues.

I moved to Singapore 3 years ago from Australia and love the place and prefer life here to Hong Kong any day.

>Condo's nowadays start at around SGD 1m for something small and basic

1,000,000 SGD is about 800,000 USD.

But effectively half that with the (subsidized?) interest rates.

Well, that makes around 1200 EUR.

So, that's even better than the "common" (not avg) monthly wage in many places in Europe. Indeed, cost of living in Singapore must be over the roof…

> the government build subsidized housing and then enact strict price controls

You're aware that the US has been doing this since the 1950s, right? And it hasn't worked as well for us?

I disagree it is the governments job to give people a place to live. From the sounds of it, Hong Kong already does a lot of this. At some point, people need to take care of themselves.

It is absolutely the governments job to give people places to live if they are unable (not unwilling) to do so on their own. The difficulty lies in determining who is truly unable and who is simply unwilling.

It is absolutely your opinion that it is their job.

It is the job of the people to determine what the job of the government is.

That was my point.

You are free to hold your opinion. But at least be upfront with that you consider it an ideological issue as there obviously are reasonable alternatives to having poor people live in prison cells.

they are not being forced to live there, they are choosing to do so and paying rent. they are free to move anywhere else they want, including across the border to mainland china where it is much cheaper.

>I disagree it is the governments job to give people a place to live. From the sounds of it, Hong Kong already does a lot of this. At some point, people need to take care of themselves.

The government IS the people. It's not some alien body as some people (mostly in the US) seem to think.

The government is the people voting to elect some representatives, so they can get some things done for them ("the country") that need massive co-ordination and central planning.

Of course it can go astray (politicians taking advantage of their power for their own benefit and such), but it's not like there such thing as "perfection" anywhere in life, be it private or public.

Right and if the people of Hong Kong thought the government should be providing suitable housing for everybody who comes to Hong Kong (note that many of these people are foreigners) then they would vote in politicians who would make that happen.

Not everybody who comes to HK, but permanent residents in HK. Foreigners shouldn't get to come and grab resources. One of the reasons property prices in HK is so ridiculously high is because of many mainlander speculators coming in buying up apartments, jacking demand even higher. The reason this city needs government intervention is because the government controls the majority of land supply, and there isn't nearly enough to satisfy everybody.

They could set up an emigration plan to somewhere less crowded.

As the video pointed out, only about half of government officials in Hong Kong are directly elected by the population. For the remainder, there is little pressure or incentive to get anything done in this regard.

Are governments here for the sake of their people? Or are people here for the sake of their governments?

A hungry homeless person is everyone's problem and a huge risk. No matter how you slice it, you end up paying the price: the value of your house goes down, the crime rate goes up, etc. It is a myth that you can escape poverty. Sure, you can move to an expensive gated community with a white gloved guard shooing away the "undesirables", but why do you think it's so expensive?

Moreover, a hungry homeless person is a security risk. How many iPhones, GPS's, laptops, etc. are stolen in a smash-and-grab incidents? How many people get hurt? No, not by your friendly neighborhood homeless lady, but by a person who feels they have no other choice but to steal or a person who is hooked on an addictive substance and can't stop?

Poverty also does not take a lot of people. A few percent here and there will cause enough headaches to become noticeable.

And poverty is chronic in society. It's not like if you took all the homeless, poor, and hungry and shipped them off to some unknown land you'd rid of the problem. No, instead more people would be pushed into the margins, becoming poor. You have to treat the cause.

Therefore, if poverty is inherent in certain societal setups, if it is everyone's problem (i.e.: everyone pays the cost) and it takes only a small percentage of people being poor to become a big problem, it is in the interest of everyone to change the societal setup so that poverty is minimized. Your original point was that it's not the government's job to do this. I argue that it is. The government (by the people and for the people) would not be doing it's job if it wasn't taking care of me or the person next to me.

As an aside, some might argue that private charities work much more efficiently than governments when it comes to homelessness/poverty/hunger. Personally, I believe a balanced approach works best. Big slow moving government projects with lots of oversight and restrictions coupled with flexible and quick-acting private charities are much more effective than either of the two.

Wish I could upvote this enough.

Not to mention the toll on the children of the poor who do not get enough good nutrition, education, or a sense of safety and permanence to grow up to be respectable, law-abiding citizens.

That's what I don't get about allegedly intellectual, allegedly fiscally conservative people who are anti-welfare. They think that it's about not "giving a free ride" to people who "don't deserve" it. They are neither intellectual nor fiscally savvy enough to understand that there is always a cost, and to help and house people with welfare -- even people who will never "contribute" -- will cost far less in the long run than the ripple effect from feeling righteous.

You're going to end up paying for it one way or another. Either in expensive prisons with armed guards, or by intervening before things get out of hand.

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