Before we start, please note that this post contains some of my opinions and not everyone may agree with them. I'm not a lawyer or professional of any kind, so the law concepts I mentioned should not be taken as legal advice. I'd appreciate it if you read with an open mind.
It has come to my attention that a lof of discussions regarding public housing have appeared on the internet. One of the most popular one goes like this, which I quote:
Unpopular opinion: 住公屋應該沒收護照禁止旅行
住得公屋係接受納稅人資助，係社會最窮嘅人。理論上最大嘅任務就係累積財富，透過綠表上居屋，改善生活環境同時，將公屋留比有需要嘅露宿者。
納稅人資助唔係比你去日本玩，係要比你儲錢離開公屋。Get real and be grateful.
Translation:
Unpopular opinion: Public Housing residents should have their passports confiscated and be banned from travelling
If one lives in public housing, they are accepting subsidies from taxpayers. They’re the poorest in society. Their biggest mission, in theory, is to accumulate wealth and get a property via GSH, improving their living quality whilst leaving public housing for the homeless.
Taxpayers aren’t subsidising your trip to Japan, but to allow you to save up and leave public housing. Get real and be grateful.
I think a lot of the points in this post are worth discussing from many perspectives. Let's dive in.
Part I: Logic
After stripping the post down to its skeleton, we have the following premises:
- Public housing tenants receive taxpayer subsidies.
- Public housing tenants are among the poorest in society.
- The purpose of the subsidy is for them to accumulate wealth and move out of public housing, by GSH or other means.
- Travelling consumes money that could have gone into savings.
- Therefore, we should confiscate public housing tenants' passports.
Premises 1 and 2 are defensible. The rest, however, are not.
Premise 3 is a normative statement in disguise. No one legislated that a tenant's "biggest mission" is to leave public housing. Public housing is never meant to be a probation programme. Whether tenants should aim to accumulate wealth and leave public housing is a legitimate debate, but it should not be treated as an obligation that the tenants never agreed to in the first place.
Premise 4 is not supported by any evidence. Travel does not equal to failing to save money. People can travel due to different purposes, business trip being one example. Even if the travel is for leisure, a budget airline ticket and a few nights in a hostel can cost less than a high-class dinner in Central. We also don't know whether the money spent on travel is the money that would have otherwise be saved.
The conclusion, therefore, cannot hold. If receiving public subsidy justifies controlling how you live, then the same logic applies to civil servants, patients in public hospitals, students studying in UGC-funded universities, people who received public transport fare subsidies, or homeowners benefiting from tax waivers. Practically every resident in Hong Kong receives, or has received, some form of public subsidy. Hardly anyone in this "unpopular opinion" thread would accept the same logic being applied to themselves. When an argument is only accepted if applied to other people, it's more of a preference than a logic principle.
Suppose that, we accept that the goal of public housing subsidies is indeed to help tenants accumulate wealth and eventually move out. Even under this assumption, the argument for confiscating passports still has issues. Apart from the fact that premise 4 still doesn't hold, we can analyse this by borrowing concepts from the law.
Part II: The Proportionality Principle
The proportionality principle helps us evaluate whether a particular measure or restriction, especially those violating individual rights, is justified in light of its objectives. In short, it requires that the measure has:
- a legitimate aim,
- must be suitable (that is, the measure must have rational connection to the aim),
- necessary (that is, there must be no less restrictive means to achieve the aim), and
- proportionate (that is, the benefits of the measure must outweigh its negative impact on individual rights).
Let's examine the proportionality of confiscating public housing tenants' passports in light of the principles outlined above.
- Does it have a legitimate aim? Arguably yes. Ensuring scarce public resources go to those who genuinely need them is a recognized and legitimate aim.
- Is it suitable? Not really. As discussed above, preventing travel does not necessarily free up a single flat.
- Is it necessary? Again, no. Less intrusive tools already exist. For example, stricter income verification, periodic reviews of tenants' financial status, or positively, targeted financial education programs could achieve the same aim without infringing on individual rights.
- Is it proportionate? Clearly not. The harm is the loss of a freedom guaranteed under Article 31 of the Basic Law. The benefit is, at most, a symbolic one.
Such proposal fails the proportionality test miserably. It's not even close.
Part III: Public Policy
It's a fair concern that public housing resouces might not be allocated efficiently. Roughly 36% of Hong Kong's population lives in public housing as tenants, the waiting list is incredibly long, and it's reasonalbe to ask whether the resource is going to the right people. That's a debate on allocation and exit mechanisms, and there are better methods than confiscating passports, for example:
- Implementing stricter income verification and periodic reviews of tenants' financial status,
- Coordinating with government departments in the mainland, or overseas, to verify tenants' financial status and assets,
- Providing short- to mid-term financial assistance for tenants to facilitate moving to another housing programme,
- Increasing the rental price based on tenants' income and financial capacity, and
- Increasing the supply of housing, reducing the zero-sum feeling of "they're occupying my flat" among the public.
Restricting one's freedom to travel should always be seen as a last resort, only justifiable when all less intrusive measures have been proven ineffective, and when the benefits clearly outweigh the harm to individual rights.
Part IV: Social and Economic Structure
Hong Kong's property prices are among the highest relative to income in the world. For a low-income family, affording a home isn't a matter of skipping a trip to Japan. Even a frugal household may need decades before they buy their first flat under a mortgage. When housing prices continue to skyrocket, telling them to cut a few thousand dollars is nothing more than asking them to chase a carrot on a stick.
It is also worth noting that poverty is not mainly caused by consumption. The way out of low income is, primarily, through increasing one's income and improving access to opportunities. These come from education, labour market conditions and employment protection. Travel plays a minor role in this picture.
Also, some jobs in this labour market are naturally low-paying and offer limited upward mobility, making it difficult for workers to improve their financial situation despite their efforts. But the whole community would rely on it to maintain essential services and functions. Street cleaners, bus drivers, delivery workers, firefighters, personal care workers (not nurses!) are all low-paying, yet essential jobs in society. Public housing is a policy choice to support these essential workers and ensure that they have access to adequate housing. Gratitude is owed in both directions, if at all.
Research suggests that a life of constantly deprivation impairs decision-making and wellbeing. A cramped flat in one of the world's densest cities makes rest and a change of scenery something close to a necessity. Treating travelling as a moral failing for one group, but a normal part of life for everyone else, says something about how we view the poor - as people who must earn the right to enjoy anything.
Conclusion
If we strip away the passport ban, the "gratitude" rhetoric and the assumption that the poor own taxpayers obedience, there is one real question underneath: how do we make sure scarce public housing resources reaches those who need it the most? This is a real policy question that requires careful consideration and thoughtful solutions.
However that's not what this post is asking. What it is asking is something much simpler, and much uglier: why do those people get to enjoy things that I think they shouldn't?
Whether this question is worth spending our time on will be up to each reader to decide.