[Perspective] The fire that changed Winnie Ho’s political career

The level 5 fire at Wang Fuk Court last November was one of the worst fires in Hong Kong’s history. Nearly a year later, a senior Hong Kong government official has finally taken political responsibility for the tragedy. Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho formally resigned on Thursday (29 October), becoming the first principal official to step down over the fire.

Following the announcement, the news sparked public attention across Hong Kong. After all, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Housing is no ordinary department head, but one of its highest-ranking politically appointed officials, holding a status akin to a cabinet minister elsewhere. Ho’s offer to resign means that political accountability for the Wang Fuk Court blaze has escalated to the very top tiers of Hong Kong’s political arena and civil service system.

Ho, 62, trained as an architect and graduated from the University of Hong Kong’s architecture department. She joined the government’s Architectural Services Department in 1992 and has served in government for more than 34 years.

Ho grew up in modest circumstances. Her father worked at a mansion in Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels, where his employer allocated the family a small room behind the garage to live in. She grew up in this unusual environment and continued living there through her university years. It was perhaps due to such formative experiences that Ho came to have a deeper appreciation of housing problems later in life.

Unlike many senior Hong Kong officials who rose through the administrative service, however, Ho spent her career in a specialist technical department, steadily working her way up. She became deputy director of Architectural Services Department in 2018 and director in 2020, taking on a key role in overseeing government building projects.

Her tenure as director coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. With the government needing to build large numbers of quarantine facilities at short notice, she actively promoted modular integrated construction to rapidly build quarantine centres, temporary hospitals and community isolation facilities in Penny’s Bay, Kai Tak and elsewhere, demonstrating a measure of administrative and operational capability.

In July 2022, after John Lee became chief executive, he restructured the government, splitting the Transport and Housing Bureau into two. Ho was appointed as the inaugural secretary for housing, officially transitioning from a technocrat to a politically accountable official.

Hong Kong’s housing problems have long been deeply entrenched, with excessive waiting times for public rental housing a particular focus of public concern. After taking office, Ho vigorously pursued the Light Public Housing programme, using sites available on a short-term basis to build about 30,000 homes and improve living conditions for families who had spent years waiting for public rental housing. She also pushed to eliminate substandard subdivided flats, establish the Basic Housing Units regime and crack down on abuse of public housing resources. During the current government’s term, Hong Kong’s composite waiting time for public rental housing has fallen sharply from a peak of about 6.1 years to a recent 4.8 years.

To be fair, Ho did achieve some results as secretary for housing in speeding up public housing construction and addressing the housing needs of lower-income residents. Her frequent personal visits to construction sites also gave the public an impression of an energetic official focused on efficient delivery.

Her policies were not without controversy, however. She pushed to tighten the “Well-off Tenants Policies” and introduced rewards for reporting abuse of public housing, recovering more than 10,000 flats. Tragically, the repossession of one flat last year led to the deaths of a mother and son, both of whom had mental illness. Their public rental flat was repossessed after they were accused of concealing assets, and they subsequently fell to their deaths in separate suicides.

But it was the Wang Fuk Court fire that truly changed Ho’s political fortunes. An independent committee’s investigation found multiple serious failings, including gaps in inspection work, by the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit in its oversight of major renovation works at Wang Fuk Court. Ho was forced to resign as a result.

Ho began as a professional architect and, through years of hard work, rose to the highest levels of government decision-making, only for a devastating fire to bring her tenure as secretary to an end. Her experience again illustrates the central distinction between Hong Kong’s politically accountable officials and ordinary senior civil servants: beyond their individual performance, they must bear political responsibility for their entire policy portfolio.

Ho’s resignation is undoubtedly an important step towards political accountability. But before the authorities comprehensively reform the regulation of building maintenance and fire safety to ensure that Hong Kong never suffers a similar tragedy again, whether Ho’s resignation can truly rebuild public trust in the government will remain to be seen.