Low-cost housing sites still not picked

The Housing Society remains in the dark about three of the five locations where it is supposed to build subsidised homes for rent or purchase under a scheme announced by the government more than a year ago.

One project, in Sha Tin, is still being discussed with the government, and only one, in Tsing Yi, is making good progress - the society will accept applications for homes there next year and construction will be completed in 2014.

All five projects come under the My Home Purchase Plan, which Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen unveiled in October last year as a relief measure for would-be homeowners who earn up to HK$40,000 a month, to give them time to save up.

The government said it had earmarked sites in five districts to deliver 5,000 flats in total. The society, a non-profit organisation and the city's second-biggest provider of subsidised housing after the Housing Authority, was asked to handle the project.

But Wong Kit-loong, the society's chief executive, expressed concerns that the Sha Tin site, which included a big slope, would incur huge maintenance costs for future home owners.

'Some say the site should not be used for My Home Purchase Plan. The Transport and Housing Bureau has not given us the site yet,' Wong said yesterday.

'As for where the remaining three projects will be, we don't know yet.'