Government aims to cut waiting time for public housing to 3 years despite Hong Kong leader giving 4½ years as new target
- Chief Executive John Lee proposed a new ‘light public housing’ scheme to cut the waiting time for public flats from 6 years to 4½ years by 2026-27
- Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin says she thinks undesirable subdivided flats with poor living conditions will not exist in 10 years
Limiting the waiting time for a public rental flat to three years is still the government’s goal, Hong Kong’s housing minister has said, even though the city’s leader gave a new target of 4½ years in his first policy address.
Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin on Monday told the Legislative Council’s housing panel that the government still planned to fulfil the city’s first chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s vow to reduce the average public housing wait to three years.
“Making the wait for public housing three years is still the government’s target. We are striving to achieve that,” Ho said.
She added that different factors would affect the waiting time, such as some applicants seeming to wait longer as they did not accept the first public flat offer because of an undesirable location.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s policy address earlier proposed a new “light public housing” scheme to create 30,000 transitional homes to cut the waiting time for permanent and temporary public flats from six years to 4½ years by 2026-27.
The supply of public rental homes in the next five years would increase from 128,000 to 158,000 with the construction of the temporary flats. The government estimated that 127,500 households were living in substandard conditions, including subdivided flats.