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The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
The Housing Authority's (HA) Subsidized Housing Committee today (24th November) endorsed the introduction of a new living space improvement transfer scheme (LSITS) to provide more transfer opportunities for public rental households.
Under the new scheme, all public rental households living below seven square metres (m2) internal floor area (IFA) per person may apply for transfer to a larger flat.
"The scheme is introduced on top of the existing Territory-wide Overcrowding Relief (TWOR) exercises, held two to three times a year, for which only 'overcrowded families' -- living below 5.5 m2 per person can apply," the Chairman of SHC, Mr Ng Shui-lai said.
Maintaining the existing 5.5 m2 per person benchmark for overcrowding relief, the SHC agreed to continue with TWOR exercises with priority over other transfer schemes to provide relief for overcrowded households.
"Applicants for LSITS will be subject to the same set of eligibility criteria and flat selection priority in the order of living density, family size and length of tenancy as with TWOR applicants," he said, adding that more than 40,000 households are eligible to apply for transfer under the two schemes.
At today's meeting, the SHC also decided to allow eligible TWOR and LSITS applicants with over ten years of residence to choose to move to any geographical districts.
At present, TWOR applicants in the New Territories (NT) are only allowed to select vacant flats in the NT estates, whereas Extended Urban (EB) applicants can select vacant flats in NT and EB estates and Urban (UB) applicants can select vacant flats in any districts.
"A lot of the overcrowded families living in the NT are unable to select a flat of their choice because the supply of vacant public rental housing (PRH) flats suitable for TWOR is unevenly distributed geographically," Mr. Ng said.
"There has been no PRH production in NT East districts for some time and eight of the 14 existing PRH estates in the districts have been sold under the Tenants Purchase Scheme," he added.
The two new measures will apply to the two transfer schemes to be launched in January next year.
The Housing Department's proactive efforts to provide relief opportunities in the past years have significantly lowered the number of overcrowded families from 19,988 households or 3.4 per cent of total PRH households in September 2000 to 5,784 households or 0.9 per cent of total PRH households in September this year.
Non-overcrowded families are also given opportunities to move to larger flats through various transfer exercises launched from time to time. Tenants in need of improvement in living conditions on medical, social or other justifiable grounds can request internal or external transfer to another flat on individual merits.
Ends/Thursday, November 24, 2005
Issued at HKT 15:36
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