Post date: Dec 08, 2015 6:28:9 PM
This society has not only reached, but completely gone over the "dignity cliff".
The government, local developers and well-off landlords have lost their collective minds resulting in first-time buyers giving up their rights to live like humans.
Audaciously, the cartel comes up with the idea of building shoebox apartments in the name of "affordability" ("Henderson Land considers building HK$1m flats", January 7). Still not satisfied with some obscene profit margins, privileged developers sell flats with a floor space efficiency as low as 65 per cent (that is, the difference between gross floor and saleable area calculations).
Shame on them.
Between 2001 and 2011 property prices have skyrocketed. Over the same period [according to the latest government statistics] the median income for men and women aged 15 to 24 [HK$8,000] and for women aged between 25 and 34 [HK$12,000] "remained unchanged" ("Pay outpaced by prices in decade of high inflation", January 11).
Greed has engulfed this city as if there's no tomorrow.
Human decency is no longer in the equation and this goes to describe the super rich and the downcast - willing offenders for the former, meat on the chopping board the latter.
Developers are dark-hearted enough to have you cough up two generations of savings just to go over the first hurdle, the banks then milk you dry for the next 30 years.
All this for the space of a kitchen and a powder room put together in some Mid-Levels apartments.
We live in a city that is totally and completely off-kilter.
Philip S.K. Leung, Pok Fu Lam 14 January, 2013 http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1127361/letters-editor-january-14-2013