Stakeholder Interview
Secretary for Housing
The Housing Bureau is committed to solving Hong Kong's housing challenges by increasing supply, enhancing quality of life and fostering thriving communities. Through innovation, advanced technologies and proactive stakeholder collaboration, its core strategies include: expanding public rental housing for low-income families, providing subsidised sale flats for aspiring homeowners, maintaining stability of the residential property market, and optimising land and resources of public housing.
Light Public Housing
- To meet the high demand for public housing, the Government announced the Light Public Housing (LPH) initiative in the 2022 Policy Address to address the short-term gap of public housing supply. This project is providing approximately 30 000 simple, standardised units, with community-centric ancillary facilities in 2 batches within a 5-year period before 2027-28.
- The LPH offers affordable, temporary housing to improve the living conditions for grassroot communities in inadequate housing at the soonest.
- The Housing Bureau leads policy formulation, while the ArchSD oversees development and supervision of design and construction, ensuring the quality and efficiency of Light Public Housing.
Ms Winnie HO, JP
Secretary for Housing
A Living ESG Showcase: Tackling Hong Kong’s Housing Shortage
The Light Public Housing (LPH) initiative is a transformative social project designed to address Hong Kong’s acute housing shortage, providing critical relief for those with pressing housing needs, such as residents of sub-divided units (SDUs). By optimising public resources, LPH delivers quality, temporary accommodation with speed and efficiency, helping to narrow the wealth gap and foster greater social equity. Building on ArchSD’s success in delivering emergency quarantine facilities during the COVID-19 epidemic, this initiative underscores ArchSD’s pivotal role in meeting societal challenges by overseeing LPH design and construction.
At its core, LPH embodies Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles, integrating rapid delivery, cost-efficiency, safety, and smart technology into a new model for sustainable public housing:
Environmental sustainability
The ArchSD leverages advanced prefabrication and precision manufacturing, such as MiC and DfMA to minimise environmental pollution (including noise and waste) and enhance resource efficiency across the entire project lifecycle, from planning and construction to operation, maintenance, and eventual deconstruction or reuse.
Social sustainability
LPH significantly improves living conditions and quality of life by providing essential community amenities and fostering social inclusion. The people-centric designs and facilities developed by the ArchSD such as study rooms, activity spaces and multi-purpose community areas promote community cohesion and well-being.
Economic sustainability
Cost-effective design and construction methods adopted by the ArchSD reduce rental costs, enabling residents to allocate more of their income to other essential needs. LPH establishes economically viable communities that support long-term prosperity.
Sustainability governance
A result-oriented approach, strengthened by strong government leadership and clear objectives, ensures high-quality policy implementation and project delivery.
Transformative Impacts for Public Development
- A catalyst for sustainable innovation: LPH pioneers the MiC approach, utilising full prefabrication, integrated MiMEP lifts, and low-carbon materials like lightweight concrete setting a new benchmark for multi-storey residential developments.
- A model for social inclusion: People-centric designs and comprehensive ancillary facilities – including retail shops, self-service laundries, study and activity rooms and multi-purpose community spaces – enhance residents’ quality of life and foster integration of grassroots families from diverse backgrounds within the community.
Exemplifying Project Excellence
ArchSD’s commitment to quality, precision and cost-effectiveness is clearly demonstrated in the LPH project. The adoption of standardised modular designs, lean construction strategies, and a streamlined direct procurement approach has significantly accelerated project timelines while reducing overall costs.
The Choi Hing Road LPH development, Hong Kong’s first high-rise LPH project featuring MiC elevators, was completed in just 18 months, setting a new record for high-rise construction speed in the city.
To optimise land use, we have also revitalised sites with lower social value, enabling faster delivery of housing units at reduced construction costs. Furthermore, ArchSD actively promotes community engagement by incorporating residents’ artwork into building designs. This participatory approach enhances the projects’ socio-cultural value and has garnered widespread acclaim.
Groundbreaking Ceremony of the First Light Public Housing Project
Fostering Cross-Bureau, Cross-Sector Synergy
LPH creates a cohesive blueprint for community development by fostering deep collaboration across government, construction, social services, and property management sectors. This synergy is built on highly engaged top-level leadership, open dialogue, continuous knowledge exchange, and a responsible, professional ethos, supported by key performance indicators that ensure operational efficiency, sustained improvements and expedited issue resolution.
Light Public Housing Project at Yau Pok Road, Yuen Long
ArchSD’s Future Contributions
We are delighted to partner with the ArchSD to advance the Government’s goal of addressing the housing shortage in the short term. We greatly appreciate the Department’s professional expertise and unwavering commitment to continuous evaluation and enhancement, which are essential to ensuring the project’s quality, productivity, cost-effectiveness and resource efficiency.
Looking ahead, we are confident that the ArchSD will continue to enhance LPH’s sustainability and architectural innovation. We look forward to their valuable contributions in promoting community engagement, advancing sustainability research, optimising public architecture designs and enhancing Hong Kong’s liveability, while completing the remaining LPH units.
Our Response
In the past year, the ArchSD made significant strides in advancing sustainable development in Hong Kong's built environment through the LPH project. Our progress was greatly accelerated by highly effective cross-bureau and cross-sectoral collaboration and a steadfast commitment to innovation. This partnership provided invaluable experience, demonstrating the powerful synergy that emerges from pursuing a common goal of sustainability and quality living. We are particularly grateful for the insights shared by the Secretary for Housing in the interview, which have enriched our understanding of the community's evolving needs and aspirations.
Looking ahead, the ArchSD will continue to champion innovation as the key driver of high-quality development. We are committed to leveraging cutting-edge technologies and people-centric designs that enhance liveability and well-being. By expanding our knowledge and deepening partnerships with industry and the community, we will fulfil our mission to build a more sustainable, resilient, and future-ready Hong Kong for all.
