Not enough land to build 200,000 flats in Hong Kong, Audit Commission warns

The Audit Commission has warned of long waits for public flats as it cast doubt on the government's claim to have enough land to meet its ambitious home-building targets.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying pledged in his January policy address to provide 200,000 new public rental flats in the decade to 2023, up from the 180,000 he promised a year earlier. Government sources said after the speech that they had identified 80 sites to be rezoned for residential use, enough to provide the public flats and meet a wider target of offering 470,000 public and private flats by 2023.

But the government watchdog said yesterday that its studies had shown a shortfall of 38 hectares on the land needed for public flats, even if the administration was able to "resolve many technical issues, local objections and [carry out] necessary rezoning" on other sites it had identified. That would mean it could build only 179,000 flats, 21,000 fewer than the target.

The commission urged the Housing Department to co-ordinate better with other bureaus and departments to streamline the planning and land administration processes, and to increase flat production, for example by increasing building density on public estates.

A shortfall in new public flats could push waiting times from the present three years to five years in 2020, the auditor warns.

"By its [the Housing Department's] internal scrutiny, the department was aware that it was difficult to maintain the average application waiting time at around three years," director of audit David Sun Tak-kei said.