Wait for Hong Kong public housing drops to 5.3 years after ‘substantial number of flats’ became available in past quarters
2023.05.11 12:37The average waiting time before moving into 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 city’s Housing Authority.The city’s main provider of public housing on Thursday announced the figure for this year’s first quarter, representing 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, explaining that resolving demand among those with “relatively longer” waiting times had brought the average down.Hong Kong public housing waits could be cut by 1½ years: think tankThe figure last March reached its highest level since 1999 after climbing to 6.1 years, before gradually declining in the following quarters. The latest statistic echoes the one recorded in June 2018.A breakdown of the figures also sho
The average waiting time before moving into 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 city’s Housing Authority.
The city’s main provider of public housing on Thursday announced the figure for this year’s first quarter, representing 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, explaining that resolving demand among those with “relatively longer” waiting times had brought the average down.
Hong Kong public housing waits could be cut by 1½ years: think tank
The figure last March reached its highest level since 1999 after climbing to 6.1 years, before gradually declining in the following quarters. The latest statistic echoes the one recorded in June 2018.
A breakdown of the figures also showed the average waiting time for individual elderly residents had stood at 3.9 years for three consecutive quarters.
During this year’s first quarter, around 2,000 general applicants were allocated a flat, including 650 elderly residents. Another 290 living spaces were provided to non-elderly individual candidates.
As of March, the city is processing some 133,200 general applicants and 97,100 requests from non-elderly individuals.
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 of land to build 330,000 public housing units in the coming decade, but only one-third of the homes are expected to be built between the financial years of 2023-24 to 2027-28.
Last October, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu introduced a new index charting “composite wait time” as part of his maiden policy address, which covered the duration spent waiting for a temporary flat.
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Currently, the new index has recorded the same 5.3-year wait time for permanent public rental flats, since the “light public housing” units are still under construction. The first batch of 2,100 is expected to be ready by 2024-25.
A total of 30,000 temporary living spaces across eight projects are set to be completed by 2027-28, catering mainly to families who have been waiting for a traditional public rental flat for three years or more, the government said.
In March, the city’s lawmakers approved a HK$14.9 billion (US$1.9 billion) construction fee covering four of the projects.
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