HONG KONG - It's time for Hong Kong's property tycoons to do what they do best: build apartments. The city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam promised to tackle the severe inequality that has fuelled four months of street violence. Instead, she offered a mishmash of underwhelming measures during her third annual policy address on Wednesday. If they want to protect their interests, the city's powerful billionaires should take matters into their own hands. While anti-government protests in the financial centre aren’t specifically about prosperity, there’s little doubt that the unaffordability of housing and yawning income inequity adds tinder to the fire. So Wednesday’s speech by Lam was a squandered opportunity. Billed as a fresh start for her beleaguered administration, it rather delivered a raft of piecemeal measures, ranging from freeing up more land for public housing to relaxing mortgage requirements, but no grand vision. In sum, her proposals were helpful but unimpressive.

If Lam can’t lead on housing, who can? The likes of the $41 billion Sun Hung Kai Properties, controlled by the Kwok clan, Henderson Land Development and other family-run conglomerates might want to step up. They are increasingly being blamed for hoarding an estimated 1,000 hectares of agricultural land and pushing up property prices. And hostility is coming from without as well as within. Chinese government mouthpiece People’s Daily last month warned the developers to stop "smashing the land” and “earning the last copper plate".

The city's elites are not solely responsible for Hong Kong's economic misery. But they do have the most to lose from political instability and escalating violence. Homes on average now cost 21 times household income, estimates Demographia, making the city the world’s least affordable housing market for the ninth consecutive year. Despite close to full employment, nearly one in five Hong Kongers live in poverty, according to an Oxfam report last year. Meanwhile the combined wealth of Hong Kong's 50 richest hit $307 billion last year, Forbes calculates, twice the government's fiscal reserves.

Some are already taking the hint. Last month, the Cheng family’s New World Development, whose empire also spans hotels, jewellery, and department stores, said it would donate 3 million square feet of its farmland reserves for social housing. Peers should follow suit and start building.

CONTEXT NEWS

- Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Oct. 16 was forced to abandon her annual policy address after some lawmakers jeered as she began speaking, causing an unprecedented cancellation of the speech in the legislature of the Chinese-ruled city. The Beijing-backed leader later gave her speech over a video feed.

- Measures unveiled included plans to take back 700 hectares of private land owned by property developers for public use under what is known as the land resumption ordinance. No further details were given as to how the process would work and which developers would be involved.

(Editing by John Foley and Katrina Hamlin)

© Reuters News 2019