Wait for Hong Kong public housing drops to 5.3 years after substantial number of flats became available in past quarters
- Housing Authority says decreased average waiting time ‘mainly due to availability of substantial number of flats for allocation in past few quarters’
- Same waiting time last reported in June 2018, with peak of 6.1 years recorded in March 2022
The average waiting time for a Hong Kong public rental flat has continued to fall, dropping from 5.5 years to 5.3 years, according to the latest quarterly statistics from the Housing Authority.
The city’s main provider of public housing on Thursday announced the figure for the first quarter this year, which showed a slight decrease in waiting times for applications from families and individual elderly residents.
“[It] is mainly due to the availability of a substantial number of flats for allocation in the past few quarters,” the authority said, noting that resolving demand among those with “relatively longer” waiting times had brought the average down.
The waiting time in March last year reached its highest level since 1999, climbing to 6.1 years, before gradually falling in the following quarters. The latest figure was last recorded in June 2018.
A breakdown of the figures also showed the average waiting time for individual elderly residents stood at 3.9 years for three consecutive quarters.
In the first quarter of 2023, around 2,000 general applicants were allocated a flat, including 650 elderly residents. Another 290 living spaces were provided to non-elderly applicants.
As of March, the city is processing some 133,200 general applicants and 97,100 requests from non-elderly individuals.
Scott Leung Man-kwong, deputy chairman of the legislature’s housing panel, urged the government to keep up its efforts on the provision of public flats.
“To further cut the waiting time, the government must ensure future projects can be completed on time, or even strive for early completion,” Leung said.
Ryan Ip Man-ki, vice-president of the think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation, forecast that the average waiting time would fall further in the future as the government expected to deliver 12,800 flats this year.
Xia Baolong, Beijing’s top official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, earlier challenged local authorities to resolve the housing crisis by 2049, noting many residents were still living in substandard subdivided flats.
The government has identified 350 hectares (864 acres) of land for 330,000 public housing flats in the coming decade, but only one-third of them are expected to be built between the financial years of 2023-24 and 2027-28.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu stepped up housing measures in his maiden policy address by introducing “light public housing”, temporary homes built by the government to house families waiting for a traditional public flat for three years or more.
Lee introduced a new index charting the “composite wait time”, which covers the duration spent waiting for a temporary flat.
Currently, the new index has recorded the same 5.3-year wait time for permanent public rental flats, since the “light public housing” is still under construction. The first batch of 2,100 homes is expected to be ready by 2024-25.
The government aims to cut the composite wait time to 4½ years by 2026-27.
