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In October, Chief Executive Carrie Lam presented the 2019 Policy Address. To gauge public views on the Address, a telephone survey was conducted from 22 to 28 October 2019 by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The overall rating for the 2019 Policy Address was 30.8 points, 52.0% of the respondents said the Policy Address was “not helpful at all” in resolving current social conflicts. 

Major findings are summarized as follows 

A total of 57.8% of the respondents showed dissatisfaction with the 2019 Policy Address, 11.0% said they were satisfied and 28.7% answered “in-between”. The corresponding figures for last year’s survey on the 2018 Policy Address were 28.8%, 35.8%, and 33.6%, respectively. Statistical analysis (Chi-squared test) shows that the results for the 2019 Policy Address were significantly different from those for the 2018 Policy Address. In addition, the overall rating for the 2019 Policy Address (on a point scale ranging from 0 to 100, 50 as a passing mark) was 30.8 points, whereas the rating for the 2018 Policy Address was 52.8 points. Statistical analysis (t-test) found that the difference was statistically significant. 

The 2019 Policy Address pointed out that housing problem is the most critical social issues Hong Kong society is facing. However, 66.2% of the respondents said that public grievance was “weakly correlated” (44.2%) or “not correlated at all” (22.0%) with the housing problems, only 20.1% said “quite correlated”, and 9.0% answered “strongly correlated”. When asked if the current policy Address was helpful in resolving current social conflicts, 86.4% of the respondents said it was only “a little bit helpful” (34.4%) or “not helpful at all” (52.0%), 9.1% believed it was “quite helpful” and 1.4% thought it was “very helpful”.

When respondents were asked about their satisfaction level on housing and land supply policies in the 2019 Policy Address, 48.4% said dissatisfied, 8.9% satisfied and 33.9% answered “in-between”. The corresponding figures for housing and land supply policies from last year’s survey on the 2018 Policy Address were 33.9%, 29.0, and 34.3%, respectively. Statistical analysis (Chi-squared test) shows that the results for the 2019 Policy Address were significantly different from those for the 2018 Policy Address. The public satisfaction level on housing and land supply policy in the current Policy Address was lower than last year. 

The respondents were also asked if the major housing and land supply policies proposed were helpful in resolving the housing problems. 31.7% of the respondents said invoking the Lands Resumption Ordinance was “quite helpful” (23.7%) or “very helpful” (8.0%). For raising the quota of the White Form Secondary Market Scheme, 29.5% of the respondents said it was “quite helpful” (26.7%) or “very helpful” (2.8%). Concerning an increase in the supply of units under the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme, 27.7% of the respondents said it was “quite helpful” (24.2%) or “very helpful” (3.5%). 20.5% of the respondents thought that accelerating the sale of flats under the Tenants Purchase Scheme was “quite helpful” (17.7%) or “very helpful” (2.8%); 20.0% said that a substantial increase in the number of transitional housing projects was “quite helpful” (15.7%) or “very helpful” (4.3%). Lastly, only 13.6 % of the respondents believed raising the cap on the value of the properties eligible for a mortgage loan for first-time home buyers was “quite helpful” (11.5%) or “very helpful” (2.1%). 

In this survey, a total of 714 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 36.3%. The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.67 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.