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The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
The Housing Authority's (HA) Subsidised Housing Committee (SHC) today (February 7) approved the income and asset limits for White Form (WF) applicants for the sale of surplus Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats under Phase 7.
The income limit for family applicants will be $40,000 per month and the asset limit will be $830,000. In line with the established arrangement, the income and assets limits for one-person applicants will be set at half of the limits for family applicants and will therefore be $20,000 and $415,000 respectively. (See table)
"The determination of these limits has taken into account the latest property market and economic conditions based on the established HOS methodology, as well as the concerns that it would be preferable to align the limits with those for the "Extension of the HOS Secondary Market Scheme to WF buyers" interim scheme recently endorsed by the Committee at the end of last year," a spokesman for the HA said.
To align with the residence requirement for the "Extension of the HOS Secondary Market Scheme to WF buyers" scheme, WF applicants under Phase 7 must have lived in Hong Kong for at least seven years on or before the closing date of the application, and his/her stay in Hong Kong not be subject to any condition of stay (except the condition on limit of stay).
At today's meeting, the SHC also endorsed two measures to maximise the use of available public housing resources.
The public rental housing (PRH) block of Tin Lee House in Lung Tin Estate, Tai O will be converted into an HOS block to be put up for sale upon the completion of lease procurement and upgrading works.
"Built in 1995, the 12-storey Tin Lee House has all along maintained a high vacancy rate. In view of the overriding need to better utilise the surplus PRH units, the Members considered it feasible to put all the 85 flats in Tin Lee House for sale under the HOS in order to maximise the use of valuable public housing resources," the spokesman said.
"The occupied flats will be recovered through a management transfer of the existing 14 households. In addition to the granting of Domestic Removal Allowance (DRA) and one-month rent free period in current tenancy, other incentives will be offered to encourage them to move out early," he said.
The incentives include a choice of any districts for transfer and a Letter of Assurance for purchasing a converted flat in the block with first priority when it is put up for sale. All tenants are required to move out before August 2013 to facilitate conversion work for upgrading the block to a state resembling that of the adjacent Lung Hin Court.
To facilitate the prompt recovery of more Housing for Senior Citizens (HSC) units of HS1 design for conversion to PRH flats for allocation to Waiting List (WL) applicants, Members endorsed to impose a management transfer for all remaining 163 non-elderly tenants residing in this type of flat.
"To encourage them to move to self-contained flats, the DRA and a maximum of three offers of flats in the same estate or an estate within the same District Council constituency, including those in a new estate if available, will be provided as incentives," the spokesman said.
"As for those who refuse to accept the three housing offers without justified reasons, a notice-to-quit will be issued to terminate the tenancy," he added.
Meanwhile, the SHC also endorsed a refinement to the current mechanism for setting WL income limit to better take into account in a timely manner the changes in applicants' income, which results in changes in expenditure.
Under the current mechanism, the WL income limits are derived using a household expenditure approach, which consists of housing costs and non-housing costs, plus a contingency provision.
"By introducing an income factor, which indicates the change in nominal wage index obtained through the Labour Earnings Survey conducted quarterly by the Census and Statistics Department, the non-housing cost component within the household expenditure will be adjusted by either the change in Consumer Price Index (CPI) (A) or the income factor, whichever is higher," the spokesman said.
The SHC agreed to adopt the refined mechanism as mentioned above for reviewing the WL income limits 2013/14 at the next meeting.
Ends/Thursday, February 7, 2013
Issued at HKT 19:37
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