Over the past year, the pandemic has upended the world and forced us to confront it in every aspect of our life. It challenged the way we used to live and put our strength to test.

Amidst the adversity and uncertainty, it is important for us to demonstrate resilience, unity and versatility, and to make swift responses to mitigate the risk of business disruptions and to protect our staff, residents and tenants.

When the coronavirus epidemic first broke out and drainage pipes were thrust into the spotlight, we wasted no time inspecting the drainages and vent pipes across our 20 rental estates. In a matter of months, internal drainage pipes of some 30,000 rental units were inspected with around 500 units fitted with Wtrap systems as appropriate to mitigate any possible risks of disease transmission.

To keep everyone safe, we deployed additional manpower to step up sanitation measures for all of our premises. For the elderly housing developments, namely the Jolly Place, the Cheerful Court and The Tanner Hill, hygiene regimens were put on par with the standards adopted for clinics and hospitals, with state-of-the-art technologies like isolation rooms, disinfection chamber, UV self-sanitizing door handles and anti-microbial coating.

With Business Continuity Plan activated and rapidly adjusted operations in place, the Housing Society has maintained “business as usual” at this very unusual time. Despite the ongoing battle with the pandemic, we have stayed the course and made some breakthrough in flat productions and laid foundations for medium and long-term flat production while making a roadmap for the future.

Putting Housing Initiatives into Action

Though caring for the wellbeing of our stakeholders has taken centre stage in times of the pandemic, we are determined that our mission to create homes for the community has not been compromised. While the pandemic inevitably brought some impact on our ongoing projects as building supplies were disrupted and some applications took longer than planned, we have been able to achieve a lot of milestones.

During the year, we have created a total of 2,606 new residences, of these, 1,640 are from the three Subsidised Sale Flats (SSF) projects of Greenhill Villa, Mount Verdant and Terrace Concerto, all of which have been completed by early 2020. Another 966 Public Rental Housing (PRH) units were provided by Ming Wah Dai Ha Phase I Redevelopment, where the resident intake has commenced in end of March.

In fact, our flat production had been at a low ebb for some time. The last time we provided new supplies of urban rental housing units dated back to 2007 with the completion of Kwun Lung Lau Phase I Redevelopment in Kennedy Town. For rural public housing, the six-storey block Ying Hoi House at Sha Tau Kok Chuen, completed in 2017, was the most recent. As for housing developments for sale, the two Urban Renewal Projects, namely Heya Crystal and Heya Aqua, both built in 2016, were the newest.

Nonetheless, we have picked up the pace of our housing projects by developing a robust pipeline of housing projects, with three rental estates, four Dedicated Rehousing Estates (DRE), five SSF projects as well as two projects for the elderly, which combined around 20,000 units to be completed over the next decade.

Redevelopment of Rental Estates

For the Housing Society, the redevelopment strategy of rental estates means not only to replace ageing buildings with new ones, but also to increase flat supply and to promote integrated community and intergenerational living. During the year, we saw the completion of 966 units of Ming Wah Dai Ha Phase I Redevelopment, which the handover of units had already commenced in March and expected to be completed by mid 2021.

Designed with the intergenerational living in mind, Phase I of the redevelopment comprises 48 elderly units and 24 accessible units with age-friendly features and barrier-free design to cater to the needs of seniors and wheelchair users. Around 330 units, or a third of the total number of units, are incorporated with adaptable design to enable flexible spatial configuration for meeting future needs of residents.

With Phase I Redevelopment completed, preparations for Ming Wah Dai Ha Phase II Redevelopment which will produce some 1,600 units, including the decanting of existing rental blocks, were already underway. A further addition of over 1,300 units will be in the future Phase III Redevelopment, among which 750 will be SSF and some 600 will be under Senior Citizen Residences Scheme (SEN). The whole Ming Wah Dai Ha Redevelopment upon its full completion will see a model of integrated and inclusive community of different ages and income groups promoting intergenerational living.

Meanwhile, the smooth progress with the rehousing estates at Shek Pai Wan Road, Ting On Street and Kai Tak Area 1E1 also gave us plenty of optimism. Construction for the three projects had already kicked off and projected to complete by 2024 and 2025. After that, the projects will help to make way for the redevelopment of Yue Kwong Chuen, Kwun Tong Garden Estate II and Chun Seen Mei Chuen respectively.

Subsidised Sale Flats

Subsidised Sale Flats have always been popular among home seekers, given that the flats were offered at discounted prices and deemed more affordable for those who wanted to climb up the housing ladder.

Three SSF projects, namely Greenhill Villa, Mount Verdant and Terrace Concerto were completed by early 2020 and most of the 1,640 units had been handed over to buyers. During the coronavirus outbreak, where some owners were unable to complete the assignment of purchase and sale agreement before the agreed dates, they were allowed to defer the procedure on a discretionary basis.

Meanwhile, another five SSF projects at Jockey Club Road, Kai Tak Area 2B1 and Anderson Road Quarry are under planning or construction, and will be ready to deliver over 5,200 units in five years to meet the aspiration of home buyers.

Dedicated Rehousing Estates

Over the past few years, we have been supporting the Government in the development of dedicated rehousing estates, to accommodate residents affected by Government’s development clearance exercises or redevelopment projects in urban areas.

There is so much to look forward to in the development of DREs, given the massive volume and mix of units the projects involved, and the impetus provided to the newly developed areas that came with new planning, new infrastructure and population intake.

Three of our DRE projects at Pak Wo Road, Kai Tak Area 1E1 and Hung Shui Kiu Phase I have already started construction, aiming to provide over 4,200 rental, subsidised sale flats and SEN units between 2024 and 2025.

For the longer term, the Housing Society has been invited to implement the redevelopment of the three urban squatter areas at Cha Kwo Ling, Ngau Chi Wan and Chuk Yuen United Village to provide 6,300 public housing units as announced earlier by the Government. The projects will include DRE flats and will form the core of our medium to long-term additional housing supply from 2030 and beyond.

Elderly Housing

Our two elderly housing projects at Jat Min Chuen and Lee Kung Street are making good progress and expected to deliver in the next two years. The one in Jat Min Chuen is set to provide an additional 64 age-friendly rental units with rent-free lifelong tenancy as incentives for seniors to surrender their underoccupied units in the estate.

The one in Lee Kung Street will be the Housing Society’s third SEN project. Aimed at the middle-income elderly group, the project is slated for completion in 2022, providing 312 age-friendly units in total.

Transitional Housing

On the front of transitional housing, two new T-Home projects have been implemented, one in Trackside Villas and another in Chun Seen Mei Chuen. Both projects have received overwhelming responses with record-high applications. With an increasing pipeline of rental estate redevelopments, it is expected more vacant units would be released as T-Homes to meet the surging demand for transitional housing.

Similarly, we have seen a demand for our another project – the enhanced “Letting Scheme for Subsidised Sale Developments with Premium Unpaid”. The Scheme was enhanced in 2019, under which owners of subsidised sale units under the Housing Society and the Housing Authority are allowed to let their flats to eligible PRH applicants without having to pay the premium. As at 31 March 2021, 580 applications from owners were received with 475 “Owner Certificates” issued, and 1,051 applications from tenants were received with 326 “Tenant Certificates” issued. More than 200 units were listed on the online Owner and Tenant Information Sharing Platform with 57 successful transactions.

Adapting Home Design to Changing Times

The pandemic has brought to the fore the issue of hygiene and sanitation in the home environment with the intermittent outbreak of the virus in residential buildings. To address the issue, we have undertaken a host of measures to improve the home design and facilities of our development projects.

To mitigate risk of virus transmission, a two-pipe system separating the drain stacks for soil water and waste water at residential floors, and drainage fitted with W-trap system will be adopted. Drainage in existing rental estates will also be inspected with altered or faulty pipes fixed and fitted with W-trap systems as appropriate.

Apart from incorporating designs that fit in with the demands arising from the pandemic, we continued to carry out improvement works in rental estates with a view to upgrading facilities for providing quality living for our residents. In this regard, a total of $110 million was committed and 64 improvement works were completed during the year, with a bulk of these belonging to our rental estate projects under the Voluntary Building Assessment Scheme.

Supporting Tenants with Care and Greater Synergy

Apart from hygiene concern, the pandemic has brought severe financial difficulties to many. Multiple rounds of rental concessions were provided to our retail tenants in the hope of alleviating their financial burden so that they could continue to serve our residents, irrespective of the fact that it costs the Housing Society a total of around $270 million in rental loss.

We also set up an anti-epidemic matching donation fund with the seed money donated by our Chairman and Management to render timely assistance to those encountering difficulties during the pandemic. Consequently, a total of $887,600 had been raised and used to support five food banks and 50 families living in our rental estates.

A Bounce Back Together Shopping Promotion Campaign was organised in October to provide vitality to the community, during with 90,000 sets of coupons were given out to our tenants and stakeholders to help them with daily expenses. The coupons, which cost $100 a set, was hardly a big sum, but the message we wanted to drive across was our readiness to help and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the toughest of times. It was most uplifting when our residents shared with us their positive response, knowing that the coupons had brought smiles to their faces.

To strengthen on our efforts in serving our residents in rental estates, we have set up a 80-plus strong multi-disciplinary CES (Caring, Engaging and Smart) team formed by social workers, occupational therapists and service officers with a view to expanding service support for the residents living in our rental estates.

Support would be rendered at the individual, neighbourhood and community level through case management, community network and district-based programmes. It is hoped that by means of enhanced synergy and social capital solicited by the CES team, it would help to create a caring neighbourhood while building a cohesive and harmonious community, and ultimately better living for the residents.

Leveraging Innovation for Sustainable Development

Under the new normal, our adaptability, resilience and capacity to innovate have proven their importance like never before. In embracing the role of the housing laboratory, we have been driving innovative approaches and technologies for our business operations, with a commitment to facilitate a more sustainable future.

Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) in steel has been deployed in the development of an extension of Jat Min Chuen, which will be Hong Kong’s first elderly housing development built with the method. In tandem, a 27-storey tower with 300 SSF units in Hung Shui Kiu Phase IA, the first subsidised housing project to engage the MiC method, is being constructed with MiC in concrete.

Greenhill Villa, a SSF development completed in 2020, has been the first project in Hong Kong using full precast concrete construction. As many as 145 precast concrete components were involved in the construction of each floor of the three towers, which were manufactured off-site before being transported to the site for installation and concrete reinforcements. Both MiC and precast construction are known to make the construction faster, cleaner, safer and of higher quality and will be the trend for construction in the years to come.

The Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology allows different parties to collaborate on the design, construction, delivery and management throughout and beyond the project’s full life cycle. Full BIM approach has been earmarked for the projects at Kai Tak Area 1E1, Hung Shui Kiu Phases IA and IB.

We also adopted a dedicated mobile digital application for the handover of units in the three SSF developments, namely Greenhill Villa, Mount Verdant and Terrace Concerto. The app allows homeowners to make online appointment for handover, and report issues for follow up and remedial works. Apart from the very convenience and efficiency the app provides, it has the added value of enabling customers to go through the procedures without being physically present, in particular during the coronavirus outbreak.

In the area of property management, we have piloted sensor technologies for elevator calling panels and licence plate recognition in some of our estates and car parks to put tactile communication to a minimum.

Likewise, we have been exploring the adoption of advanced technologies such as robots for security and cleansing in our Operations Headquarters, AI based drone and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for tracking of data and management of projects, with a view to enhancing operational efficiency and safety.

Across the corporate level, the e-tendering system had been put in place to streamline the process with a view to facilitating a greener office with paperless solutions.

Bridging Ties with the Community

The pandemic has not stopped us from forging ties and building closer community when love and care was most needed.

We have continued to organise, sponsor and support in kind events and projects in dedication to philanthropy, environmental and youth development. Notwithstanding the social distancing measures being in force for the better part of the year, we have been working harder than ever to reach out to our stakeholders.

To stay connected while staying apart, most of our events have gone virtual or hybrid, such as the yearly Hong Kong Housing Society Award, or the Dialogue with Housing Society Members. At a time when the Housing Society Exhibition Centre and the Elderly Resources Centre were closed due to the pandemic outbreak, platforms of virtual tour were created for the two centres. An outreach education team was set up for reaching out to the students in primary and secondary schools, and tailormade education programmes by the HS e-Academy were created to help the younger generation gain a better understanding of the Housing Society and housing development in Hong Kong.

A wide range of events targeting young people have been organised by the Housing Society Academy Alumni Club, most of which were informed by the goal to empower the younger generation with the necessary skills and mindset to serve the community at large. The Intergenerational Play Space Design Competition, Hoarding Beautification Competition, Gerontech Competition were just a few of the events that encouraged innovation and creativity among young people, while promoting intergenerational harmony.

Enhancing Capabilities

Challenges always bring a fair share of risks and opportunities, and we need to be well prepared in order to counter the risks and capture the opportunities.

To drive our longer term development, we have set up a Policy Research and Business Innovation Unit in 2020. The new Unit is geared to strengthen our research capacity for incubation of new businesses, services and practices as well as to promote innovation by advocating a workplace culture that accepts and embraces changes and multi-disciplinary collaboration. It is also tasked with strengthening our role as a housing laboratory by exploring new housing prototypes that suit the housing needs of all ages in Hong Kong.

A number of housing topics including intergenerational residential housing as well as the deployment of robotic technologies for maintenance operations and management have been on the agenda of the Unit.

In tandem, we strived to create an ‘innovative’ culture in the organisation by engaging our management team and staff in various learning programmes to keep them abreast of the latest technologies that will be vital to the sustainable development of the organisation.

At the same time, we have expanded our workforce and equipping them to go with the growth in the portfolio and pipeline of housing developments, which will be hitting the peak over the next ten years. We have also turned a new page for our operation when a new Operations Headquarters was set up and commenced operations at 1063 King’s Road to housethe Development and Marketing Division, Projects Division, Corporate Planning and Accounts Section, Finance Section and Human Resources Section, with a view to accommodating the increased manpower while improving employee engagement in a better working environment. The premises of 28/F World Trade Centre will be renovated as our Corporate Office.

An additional office in the New Territories is also on the horizon with the acquisition of an industrial building in Fanling at a price of $270.8 million to support the sales and management of various projects in the New Territories.

Financial Performance

Though the operating environment has been very challenging in the grip of the pandemic, we have been able to maintain a sturdy financial position with prudent management of our business and investments. A net surplus of $7.6 billion was recorded during the year, of which $6.1 billion is attributed to investment gain.

Currently, we have committed over a dozen projects under various housing schemes and the capital commitment is very substantial in the years to come. To cope with the expanded development programme, the Management will work closely with the newly set up Task Force on Financing under the Executive Committee to examine our financial resources and propose a funding strategy that can fulfil our development needs.

Conclusion

The Housing Society has stood the test of 2020/21. We have pulled together amid the unprecedented challenges. There were the front-line workers at our estates and properties working round the clock in a bid to upkeep the good living environment of our residents. Those at elderly housing and social services reinventing programmes to engage the seniors and residents to keep them happy and healthy. The project staff trying all means to keep projects on track. The volunteers who continued to bring a smile to the faces of those in the community. They were the foot soldiers who fought in anonymity.

2020/21 should not only be remembered as a year of battle against the pandemic. It was also a chapter in the Housing Society’s history where new homes for the community were created, new development sites were secured, new plans were made and new ideas were being explored.

Looking forward to a future which may not be entirely certain, the perseverance and the resilience we built during the past year will keep us in good stead in overcoming the challenges ahead and taking us to the next level.

To end this message, I must express my deepest appreciation towards our Chairman and to our Supervisory Board and Executive Committee members for their insightful and professional guidance. I am also thankful to the management colleagues and all of our staff for their consistent dedication and commitment to achieving excellence year after year.