Hong Kong families waiting more than five years for public housing as city scrambles to find land
Delay at a nearly two-decade high and lawmakers expect it to worsen to as long as seven or eight years because of land shortage
The wait for public housing in Hong Kong is at its highest in almost two decades, with families on hold for more than five years to be allocated a flat, according to official statistics released on Friday.
Families waited an average of five years and one month to be given a public housing flat as of the end of March, according to Housing Authority statistics. Elderly applicants waited for an average of two years and nine months.
The statistics, released quarterly, were calculated based on data from those who received a flat in the past 12 months and is used as a reference for current applicants.
Out of 272,300 applicants, around half (56 per cent) were families, and the rest were single, non-elderly applicants.
The last time there was such a long wait for public flats was in 2000 when low-income families had to wait five years and three months.
The authority’s subsidised housing committee chairman Stanley Wong Yuen-fai said that they expected the average waiting time would continue to worsen in the next five years.