ABSTRACT
The stock of public housing estates in Hong Kong grew at a fast rate during the last 2 decades, from 566,000 flats in 1988 to 674,000 flats in 2008. The Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) has shaped and re-shaped her maintenance and management strategies in this stretch of time as both her buildings and population age with time. The transformation is centred on sustainability of the estates as communities in the built environment. The focus is on people.
Maintenance strategy moved from the traditional responsive mode to proactive approaches. Along the time-line are the CARE (Condition, Appraisal, Repair and Examination), Home-CARE and Total Maintenance Schemes. Estate renewal moved from the Comprehensive Redevelopment Programme to the new Long Term Housing Strategy, Comprehensive Structural Investigation Programme, Estate Improvement Programme and addition of lifts and other provisions to improve accessibility within the estates and inside the buildings. Latest technologies are introduced to reduce energy consumption and to enhance security and enjoyment of the tenants, such as lift modernization, free Wi-Fi provisions and digital CCTV surveillance systems. Provision of estate management services moved from conventional transactional mode to participative mode, with a strong educational emphasis. The Estate Management Advisory Committees, the Housing Channel, Marking Scheme for Estate Management Enforcement, and more recently the pilot projects of Housing Advisory and Service Team are rolled out as solid steps along this direction. The concept of providing shelters for the needy gradually evolved to the building of the home and a supportive community, with a package of schemes for fostering harmonious families in the estates. This paper maps the transformation, with particular reference to fostering harmonious communities, caring for people of different ages and abilities, community participation, life-cycle care of the built environment, estate rejuvenation, and contributions to a more ecologically friendly environment.
Keywords: Community development, Estate improvement, Proactive care, Public housing, Maintenance, Structural investigation, Sustainability.
