Shopping centres play important roles in the public rental housing estate system. They function as socio-economic mediums among local residents. According to Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA), the Hong Kong government (the government) provides rent supplements with local tenants to encourage them to develop their own businesses. As a result, local and small-scaled businesses have been developing steadily.
Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) is a private-subsidized housing scheme implemented by HKHA. The sale of HOS‟s housing units is HKHA‟s major source of income. Yet, the government suspended HOS because of the financial crises broken out in 1997, which reduced HKHA‟s revenues dramatically. Despite the fact that the demand of rental public housing was increasing, HKHA had inadequate resources for public housing development. Thereupon, the government decided to privatize their assets (shopping centres, market stalls, cooked food stalls and car parks) by transferring them to a private sector – The Link Real Estate Investment Trust (The Link).
Privatization is a common economic tool for governments that can increase revenues in a short period. Nonetheless, privatization has numerous negative impacts. Before privatization, the social and political parties had a hostile attitude towards privatization. They doubted whether The Link would change the existing business strategies and focus on profit maximization through increasing the rent from tenants unreasonably. Nevertheless, HKHA decided to privatize its assets in November 2005.
The Link has been taking the overall management role in the privatized assets for almost 9 years. It has been criticized for over-emphasizing on business maximization by sacrificing public and social interests. This study is to discuss and evaluate the socio-economic impacts of privatization and The Link on the public estates.
Questionnaires for the visitors and tenants, observations for the social events of The Link and searched for the news and annual reports of The Link had been carried out for evaluating the actual social and economic impacts from the daily operations of The Link. The results show that both of the positive and negative aspects of the social and economic impacts are caused by The Link after privatized the assets from HKHA.
It is encouraged that the government and the service provider should review the effectiveness of the progress. In addition, those negative impacts which caused by privatization can be turned to be positive if the government and the private sectors work together on regular review and continuous improvements. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/207636 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Lau, Wai-ho, 劉為豪 |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License, The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works. |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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