As protesters demonstrated against a proposed 10 per cent rise in rent for public housing, a Housing Authority member unveiled a move that could cut the rise down to 5.4 per cent over two years.
After a closed-door meeting of the authority's subsidised housing committee, chairman Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said the authority was considering a one-month rent waiver to ease the effect of the rent increase.
The waiver would cut the actual rent increase over the next two years, from September, down to 5.4 per cent, authority member Michael Choi Ngai-min said.
About 100 people protested against the rent rise, the maximum allowed by law and the highest rise since 1997, at the authority's Ho Man Tin headquarters yesterday before the meeting began. The demonstrators, from different political parties and concern groups, called the authority a 'bloodsucker', and some burned banners.
Wong Kwun, chairman of the Federation of Public Housing Estates, said the decision to raise the rent should be left to the next administration, which should consider relief measures to offset the increase.
Cheung said the authority was bound by the Housing Ordinance to accept the 10 per cent rise, an amount based on a biennial review of household incomes by the Commissioner for Census and Statistics.
'Under the law we cannot suspend the rent rise or launch it in phases,' he said. 'But the law allows the authority to provide relief measures,' Cheung said, citing the high inflation rate. 'The most feasible way is to refer to the measures in the rent review two years ago, and give a month's waiver.'