Housing

Build New Housing in Hong Kong Using This One Weird Trick

Developers are profiting off of illegal land rights sales through the Small House Policy, a 1970s rule that lets villagers build small houses with few restrictions.

Reform-minded leaders in the New Territories say the policy needs to change. The policy is often held up as an example of how things work in the New Territories, a part of the city’s territory that was not won by the British Empire from Imperial China after the Opium Wars but leased in 1898.Erin Hale

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By Erin Hale

February 8, 2019 at 10:43 AM EST

The cluster of buildings that make up the gated Elegant Park apartment complex in Yuen Long are typical of the low-rise developments found across Hong Kong’s New Territories, the kind of place that many residents may choose to live if they are searching of cheaper rent or more open space.

While many associate Hong Kong with towering skyscrapers of Central, half of the city lives in the New Territories, 368 square miles of planned “new towns,” outlying island communities, country parks, and former villages now sprawling into abandoned agricultural land.

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