In The Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Limited v Cho Cheuk Chee Amy and The Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Limited v Kwan Wai Kin, CAMP 19 & 20/2026, [2026] HKCA 1344 (31 July 2026), the Court of Appeal (Cheung and Au JJA) disposed of six concurrent applications by the last two remaining Tai Hang Sai Estate tenants in a single judgment: it refused their renewed applications for leave to appeal against the possession orders made by the District Court, dismissed their stay applications and their urgent stay applications issued on the eve of execution, and discharged the interim stay previously granted. The decision, handed down on the papers, removes the final legal obstacle to the recovery of vacant possession of the Estate and paves the way for its long-planned redevelopment.
Background
Tai Hang Sai Estate is the only privately owned low-rent housing estate in Hong Kong. Its owner, the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Limited (“HKSHC”), is a non-profit charitable institution incorporated in 1952 to provide affordable housing to low-income families in the resettlement era following the Shek Kip Mei fire. In March 2021, HKSHC entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Urban Renewal Authority for the redevelopment of the Estate, which will more than double the existing 1,603 units to over 3,300 units, of which 2,058 will be offered under the Government’s Starter Homes scheme.
To facilitate the redevelopment, HKSHC announced rehousing arrangements in June 2023, offering eligible tenants the right to return to the redeveloped Estate together with rental subsidies and removal allowances, and offering ex gratia removal allowances even to ineligible occupants. Over 99% of the tenants voluntarily delivered up possession.
A handful of tenants refused, and HKSHC commenced possession proceedings against them in the District Court in late 2023. The redevelopment has since generated a series of unsuccessful legal challenges. In the first judicial review, Leung Ah Duen v The Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Limited [2025] HKCFI 3715, Coleman J held that HKSHC’s rehousing and eviction decisions were made qua private landlord and were not amenable to judicial review (see our earlier article here). In the second judicial review, Ma Mei Mei v Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Ltd & Town Planning Board [2025] HKCFI 5772, Coleman J dismissed the challenge as “utterly hopeless” and ordered costs against the applicant notwithstanding the leave stage (see our earlier article here).
The present decision arises from the possession proceedings themselves. Following the trial of the co-heard actions, the District Court handed down judgment on 23 October 2025 ([2025] HKDC 1800), ordering the defendants (including Madam Cho and Mr Kwan) to deliver up vacant possession of their respective units. The Trial Judge held, inter alia, that the tenancies had expired by effluxion of time; that the hire-purchase and outright sale agreements relating to the former Kwong Ming Village cottages in the 1950s concerned only the structures and conferred no interest in land; and that whatever interests subsisted in the cottages were extinguished when the Government cancelled the relevant occupation permits under the Resettlement Ordinance 1958 and the cottages were demolished. Madam Cho’s defence of promissory and proprietary estoppel failed on the facts: HKSHC never made any clear and unequivocal representation of a right to remain in the Estate permanently. Mr Kwan’s sole remaining defence, namely that clause II(26) of the tenancy agreement was void, was academic, since HKSHC did not need to rely on that clause to recover possession.
The Trial Judge refused leave to appeal on 31 December 2025 ([2026] HKDC 29). Madam Cho and Mr Kwan renewed their applications before the Court of Appeal in January 2026. In the meantime, HKSHC obtained writs of possession in March 2026. After the District Court refused a further stay in April 2026, the two tenants issued urgent summonses in May 2026 seeking to restrain the imminent execution of the possession orders. The Court of Appeal granted an interim stay on 19 May 2026 pending determination of the applications, and directed that all six summonses then before it, namely the two renewed leave applications, the two stay applications and the two urgent stay applications, be disposed of on paper under Order 59 rule 2A(5)(a) of the Rules of the High Court.
The Decision
Au JA, giving the judgment of the Court, refused all six summonses.
New points not raised below. The threshold question proved decisive for both applicants. All six of Madam Cho’s proposed grounds, which sought to re-open the Trial Judge’s analysis of the 1950s purchase arrangements, the Resettlement Ordinance 1958 and the translation of “permanent re-provision”, had never been raised before the Trial Judge on the leave application below, which Madam Cho personally attended. Applying established practice, the Court held that, absent an acceptable explanation, new points not canvassed below are generally not proper grounds of appeal.
Mr Kwan’s five grounds fared no better. His central complaint of procedural unfairness rested on the Trial Judge’s post-trial invitation for supplementary submissions on certain ordinances, which he said entitled him to advance new arguments on the hire-purchase agreements and the 1958-1959 rehousing framework. The Court rejected that characterisation: the invitation could not be understood as permitting Mr Kwan to resurrect defences abandoned at trial through counsel, or to raise defences never pleaded. An appellate court will not lightly permit an appellant to raise abandoned defences on appeal, particularly where the new points are fact-sensitive and would have affected the evidential course of the trial, including HKSHC’s decision not to cross-examine Mr Kwan. Notably, Mr Kwan was legally represented throughout when he accepted the condition, upon discharging his counsel at the closing stage, that he would not depart from the positions his counsel had confirmed; no complaint about that condition was made at the time.
No reasonable prospect in any event. The Court went on to hold that the proposed grounds also failed on their merits. The Trial Judge’s findings that HKSHC made no “resettlement promise” and that the 1961 correspondence contained no representation of a perpetual right to rent were amply supported by the evidence, and the estoppel principles applied were firmly established. The complaint that “permanent re-provision” in a 1952 Government letter should have been translated as 永久 rather than 長久 was rejected as a fixation which had no bearing on the outcome. An attempt to attack findings made in a sibling action was disposed of on the short ground that the actions were heard together but never consolidated, so that evidence in one action did not automatically become evidence in another.
Stay discharged. Since neither intended appeal had any reasonable prospect of success, the stay applications necessarily failed, and the interim stay of 19 May 2026 was discharged forthwith. Costs were ordered against both applicants, with certificate for counsel.
For the Tai Hang Sai Estate itself, the judgment brings the possession litigation to a close some three years after the first possession actions were commenced, and clears the way for a redevelopment that will double the housing stock on the site.
Michael Lok and Paul Law acted for the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation Limited in the Court of Appeal, as well as in the second judicial review. They were led by Patrick Fung SC in the underlying possession proceedings, and by Jin Pao SC in the first judicial review.
Read the judgment here at: https://legalref.judiciary.hk/lrs/common/ju/ju_frame.jsp?DIS=183435&currpage=T
Read our earlier articles on the Tai Hang Sai Estate litigation:
- Public Good and Judicial Review: Re Tai Hang Sai Estate Redevelopment (27 August 2025): https://www.dvc.hk/insights/public-good-and-judicial-review-re-tai-hang-sai-estate-redevelopment
- Staunch Warning to JR Applicants: Two Recent Decisions of the High Court (3 December 2025): https://www.dvc.hk/insights/staunch-warning-to-jr-applicants-two-recent-decisions-of-the-high-court
