Housing Authority not giving up on three-year wait times for public flats, committee chair says
More work needed to meet goal, panel head Stanley Wong Yuen-fai admits, as latest figures show waiting time for low-income families now at 4.7 years
The pledge to keep the maximum waiting time for low-income families to get into public flats at three years will not be abandoned, a Housing Authority member said, despite the latest figures showing that waiting time has gone up to 4.7 years.
Admitting that a wait of almost five years was “quite long”, subsidised housing committee chairman Stanley Wong Yuen-fai stressed that a lot more work had to be done to meet the three-year target.
“It is really hard to speculate when we can achieve the target,” Wong said on Friday morning. “We are still working hard towards the goal, but it may be a long-term thing to return the waiting time to three years.”
But Wong said keeping the three-year goal, though it seemed far-fetched at the moment, had its merits.
“We still set this as a working target in hope of gathering support. For example, when the district council objects to us building public housing, [the discrepancy in the target and actual waiting time] can persuade them.”