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The Housing Department (HD) adopts a reasonable and flexible approach in devising housing arrangements for divorced couples taking individual circumstances into consideration.
In response to media enquiries on policy on household splitting, a spokesman for the HD said that the coverage under the Policy on Conditional Tenancy was extended in November 2001 to cover persons who fell victims to domestic violence and had petitioned for divorce including spouses having no offspring and spouses bringing along no dependent children.
Temporary accommodation in a public rental housing (PRH) estate in the form of a conditional tenancy will be offered to the aggrieved party. Nevertheless, conditional tenancies will only be offered to those with a genuine need upon recommendation by the Social Welfare Department. About 300 cases have been handled since November 2001.
"In line with the policy of ensuring equitable allocation of housing resources, the conditional tenancy beneficiaries are required to pass the Comprehensive Means Test with income and asset limits pitched at the prevailing Waiting List levels and the Domestic Property Test and to be granted the custody of dependent children before conversion of a conditional tenancy into a normal tenancy upon the court's award of divorce decree," the spokesman said.
"The department will generally favour the grant of the tenancy to the party having the custody of children if an agreement cannot be reached by both parties on the public housing tenancy.
"For cases where the divorced couple are granted joint custody of their children, only the party having the legal right to live with the offspring continuously and permanently will be favoured with the tenancy," he said.
"The single party not being granted custody of any offspring should leave the PRH flat. In case of difficulties in finding accommodation, he or she may either apply for an interim housing unit in the New Territories or apply for PRH through the Single Person Waiting List," he said.
"Although request for splitting of tenancy to acquire an additional PRH unit is normally not supported to safeguard the rational allocation of public housing resources, exceptions will be granted if circumstances are unique and extenuating.
"The department will consider all requests based on individual merits," the spokesman said, adding that more than 220 households were granted splitting of tenancies over the past three years.
Ends/Monday, June 12, 2006
Issued at HKT 20:51
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