A small step towards affordable Hong Kong rents

Affordable housing is a topic that is not easily knocked off its perch at the top of the headlines. It says something about the distraction of the social unrest sweeping Hong Kong that news of a significant adjustment in housing policy has been buried by latest reports of the protests. This is not without irony because one of the demands of the protesters is ... affordable housing.

In a bid to ease the city’s residential property crunch, the Housing Authority is to allow long-term owners of subsidised homes to sublet them to people on the waiting list for public flats without having to pay a premium. Those eligible must have owned their flats for 10 years. Tenancy is restricted to general public housing applicants who have been on the waiting list for more than three years or non-elderly single applicants who have been waiting at least six years.

The 10-year ownership requirement is to prevent speculators buying subsidised homes for short-term gains. Owners of 340,000 Housing Authority flats who are now required to pay a premium before subletting their units will ultimately be eligible for the scheme to be launched in the fourth quarter this year.

The premium requirement to deter subletting for profit is fundamental to the social objectives of subsidised housing. The non-government Housing Society has been running a similar scheme since October. Both the authority and the society will relax conditions of the scheme to allow entire flats to be let.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor proposed the change in 2017 to alleviate housing problems. It is unlikely to make a big impact, but it is an experiment worth trying if it improves the living standards of low-income people by giving them wider affordable choices than subdivided flats.