Hong Kong is racing to tackle its housing crunch, and it's meeting its goals. The city's light public housing program is delivering thousands of affordable units at record speed, thanks to cross-border teamwork with factories in the Greater Bay Area. These transitional units are for individuals on the waitlist for a permanent rental home. Our reporter Huang Fei spoke to Hong Kong's Housing Secretary, Winnie Ho, to find out how the model is changing lives.

WINNIE HO Secretary for Housing Hong Kong Special Administrative Region "This is the project; you can see the scale. When I came to site, when the boxes were still being craned in on the 10th floor, I can walk up to the 6th floor, and all the finishes are already done. It's very tidy. I can walk up the site in my high heels.

"The way we do it is using modular integrated construction, which is a new construction method being widely used and explored in Hong Kong. When I start to do the foundation work on site, the factory can start manufacturing. Once we go through the foundation stage, the modules can come in. And so we managed to build three days per floor. So what they do on site is the pipe work connections, electricity, wiring, and that's all. And then they are ready for intake."

HUANG FEI CGTN "And intake is happening as we speak, lots of happy faces."

WINNIE HO Secretary for Housing Hong Kong Special Administrative Region "Yes, you can see lots of people moving around. When I visited the Yuen Long light public housing project, a little girl showed me to her new home, and on the way we pointed to the flowers and her smile was really, really heartwarming.

"The whole light public housing program, we target to provide 30,000 units. By 2027, I will have 20 tall building blocks like this. We follow the international high standard of our building quality, and in the Greater Bay Area mainland cities, they have very good factories. Without these factories. This cannot be achieved."

HUANG FEI CGTN "A third of Hong Kong's population live in public housing, but the way for public housing is quite long. In the meantime, about 200,000 people are still living in subdivided flats, the infamous 'coffin homes.' The Hong Kong government has pledged to eradicate these coffin homes by 2049. How do you get there?"

WINNIE HO Secretary for Housing Hong Kong Special Administrative Region "Talking about the waiting time, the waiting time has dropped by 1 year to 5.1. Every point one is very difficult to achieve. Once we start the intake of light public housing, immediately we see the effect. That's giving a choice for those people who are now in very poor conditions. We offer them very low rent as well. This is the first step to tackle the subdivided unit issue. At the same time, if you want to subdivide your units for rental, it has to follow certain minimum requirement."

HUANG FEI CGTN "What sort of lessons do you think Hong Kong can offer other high density cities facing housing shortages?"

WINNIE HO Secretary for Housing Hong Kong Special Administrative Region "We learn how we can provide temporary, affordable housing for people who are now in very difficult situations and integrating the good services of our NGOs. I expect these families to live in the light public housing for two years or three years before they moved to traditional housing. We hope that these families can learn better family relationship skills, how they can plug into the various social services in Hong Kong. And so these two years are not just about physical space, is about software as well, software support to the family."