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Following is a question by the Hon Leung Kwok-hung and a written reply by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, in the Legislative Council today (May 27):
Question:
Will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the respective quarterly median rent-to-income ratios of all public rental housing (PRH) households and of PRH households by household size since the third quarter of 2007;
(b) given that the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) will conduct a review of the relevant rent next year under the Housing (Amendment) Ordinance 2007 and make adjustments to the relevant rent according to the rate of change in the income index (which reflects the level of the mean monthly household income of PRH tenants) for 2009 as compared to that for 2007, of the details of the data collected by HA for computation of the income index for 2007 (including the respective percentages of the number of PRH households with one person, two persons, three to four persons and more than four persons in the total number of PRH households); and whether HA has started collecting data for computing the income index for 2009; if so, of the data collected so far; and
(c) of the respective numbers of PRH households who are currently receiving PRH rent assistance and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance, their respective percentages in the total number of PRH households, as well as the number of such households who are elderly tenants living in one-to-two-person flats?
Reply:
President,
The Housing (Amendment) Ordinance 2007 (the Ordinance) introduced a new income-based public rental housing (PRH) rent adjustment mechanism, which provides for both upward or downward rent adjustments according to the changes in PRH tenants' household income to replace the previous statutory 10% median rent-to-income ratio (MRIR) cap. The Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council (LegCo) in June 2007 and came into operation on January 1, 2008. Under the new rent adjustment mechanism, the Housing Authority (HA) shall conduct a review for PRH rent every two years, and vary the rent according to the change in the income index over the first and second periods of each rent review. According to the Ordinance, if the income index for the second period is higher than the income index for the first period by more than 0.1%, HA shall increase the rent by such a rate of increase or 10%, whichever is less; and if the income index for the second period is lower than the income index for the first period by more than 0.1%, HA shall accordingly reduce the rent by such a rate of reduction. The first rent review will be conducted in 2010.
Response to the three parts of the question is as follows:
(a) As MRIR is no longer the statutory mechanism for rent adjustment, HA has not computed the relevant data since the enactment of the Ordinance.
(b) In relation to the first rent review in 2010, the first and second periods refer to the period of 12 months expiring on December 31, 2007 and the period of 12 months expiring on December 31, 2009 respectively. HA will collect income data by random selection of PRH households in the "Survey on Household Income of PRH Tenants". As regards the first period, the percentages of households with one person, two persons, two to four persons and more than four persons in the survey were 11%, 19%, 74% and 15% respectively.
Under the new rent adjustment mechanism, the PRH rent is varied according to the change in the income index over the first and second periods of each rent review. The first period of the first rent review will be taken as the base year and hence, its income index will be set at 100. As for the second period, since the collection of income data of PRH households is still in progress, we cannot as yet provide the relevant data.
(c) As at March 31, 2009, there were around 12,000 PRH households receiving assistance under the Rent Assistance Scheme (RAS), representing 1.8% of the total number of PRH households. A total of around 147,000 households were receiving Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), representing 22% of the total number of PRH households. Of these, about 5,400 and 55,000 were one-to-two-person elderly households receiving assistance under RAS and CSSA respectively.
Ends/Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Issued at HKT 12:45
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