A marking scheme as a means of controlling anti-social behaviour : A Hong Kong case

After the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the Housing Department launched the Marking Scheme for Tenancy Enforcement in Public Housing Estates which aimed to improve the environmental hygiene in the pubic housing estates in Hong Kong. In effect, the marking scheme is a measure to arrest anti-social behaviour in the living environment, but why public rental housing is the sole target of the control remains unanswered. This study attempts to fill this gap by exploring whether such administration-driven delimitation can be explained from the perspective of welfare conditionality. While it seems that the housing costs of public housing tenants are heavily subsidized by the government, so that their behaviour should be closely monitored by some institutionalized arrangement, contradictions are created by the marking scheme. For example, other subsidized housing such as Home Ownership Scheme and Tenants Purchase Scheme estates are not subject to the marking scheme. Whether the misdeeds included in the scheme are all socially undesirable is doubtful. Based on the discussions made in this paper, recommendations are provided to public administrators regarding the fairness and transparency of the anti-social behaviour control in Hong Kong.