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Following is a question by the Hon Tony Tse Wai-chuen, and a reply by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, in the Legislative Council today (May 22):
Question :
The Hong Kong Housing Authority pointed out in its Report on the Review of Home Ownership Scheme published in 1996 that one of the objectives of implementing the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) was "to encourage better off public rental housing tenants to upgrade to home ownership so that public rental flats released by them could be allocated to other families in need of assisted housing". With regard to expediting the turnover of public rental housing (PRH) flats, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the number of PRH flats surrendered by PRH tenants in each of the past five years, broken down by the reason for surrendering the flats; among these cases, of the respective numbers of PRH tenants who purchased homes under HOS and the HOS Secondary Market Scheme;
(b) whether it is one of the policy objectives of the Government of the current term "to encourage PRH tenants to upgrade to home ownership and surrender their PRH flats"; if so, of the various specific indicators set by the Government for this objective, and how such indicators compare with those in the past; if not, the reasons for that; and
(c) of the specific measures implemented by the Government in the past five years for encouraging PRH tenants to surrender their PRH flats; whether it has conducted any comprehensive review of the effectiveness of these measures; if it has, of the review results; whether it will introduce new measures in 2013-2014 to further encourage PRH tenants to surrender their PRH flats in order to expedite the turnover of PRH flats; if it will, of the specific details and implementation schedule of the various new measures; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
The Government's housing policy is to provide public rental housing (PRH) for low income families who cannot afford private rental accommodation. To ensure the rational allocation of limited public housing resources, the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) always encourages PRH households who have benefited from a steady improvement in their income and assets to return their PRH flats to the HA for reallocation to families that are more in need of the PRH flats. In 1987 and 1996, the HA implemented respectively the Housing Subsidy Policy and the Policy on Safeguarding Rational Allocation of Public Housing Resources (collectively referred to as the "Well-off Tenants Policies"). The objective is to reduce the level of subsidy given to "comparatively well off" tenants, using the two factors of "income" and "assets" to determine the appropriate subsidised level for PRH. Under the so-called "Well-off Tenants Policies", households that have lived in PRH for ten years or more are required to declare their household income biennially. Depending on the income levels, those with a household income exceeding the Waiting List income limits are required to pay 1.5 times or double net rent plus rates. Households who are paying double rent are also required to declare their assets biennially. If their household assets exceed Waiting List (WL) income limits by 84 times, they are required to move out from their PRH flats. Details are at Annex A.
My reply to each part of the questions raised by the Hon Tse Wai-chun is as follows:
(a) The breakdown of number of PRH flats recovered by the HA and the net amount in each of the past five years is detailed at Annex B.
There are various reasons for HA to recover PRH flats. They include voluntary surrender of flats by tenants due to different reasons (e.g. renting or purchasing flats in the private market, death of single tenants, elderly tenants admitted to elderly homes, etc); PRH flats recovered by the Housing Department (HD) as a result of tenancy control actions; and surrender of PRH flats by tenants upon the purchase of the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats under Green Form (GF) Status, etc.
After deducting those reserved for the PRH tenants requiring transfer, there would be a net gain of about 7 000 recovered flats each year that could be re-allocated to WL applicants and other PRH applicants (such as those to be housed through Compassionate Rehousing).
The number of PRH households moving out from PRH flats owing to the purchase of HOS flats from the HA or from the HOS Secondary Market with premium not yet paid in the past five years is at Items (iii) and (iv) of Annex B.
(b) The Government's policy objective is to let the public to choose accommodation according to their affordability and ability, including home ownership. We will provide subsidised home ownership flats on top of public housing so as to build a progressive housing ladder. We encourage PRH tenants who can afford to do so to purchase HOS flats from the HA or from the HOS Secondary Market with premium not yet paid under the GF Status. As such, in the past seven phases of the sales of Surplus HOS flats, the HA has reserved at least 60 per cent of the flats for purchase by GF applicants, although the final take up ratio by GF applicants sometimes falls short of the reserve. PRH tenants are required to surrender their flats to the HA after purchase of HOS flats. This will facilitate the release of more PRH flats for reallocation. Nonetheless, we do not set any "hard targets" on the number of HOS flats to be purchased by PRH tenants.
(c) As mentioned above, to facilitate the turnover of PRH flats, the HA has implemented the "Well-off Tenants Policies" and allows PRH tenants to purchase HOS flats under the GF status, who then surrender their PRH flats to the HA upon such purchase. At the same time, HD has taken a multi-pronged approach to proactively combat tenancy abuse. For substantiated tenancy abuse cases, the HA will issue a Notice-to-quit and recover the PRH flats for reallocation. Relevant measures include:
(i) frontline staff will conduct at least one flat visit to all the PRH households in the territory biennially. Any suspected abuse cases detected will be referred to the Housing Department's Central Team for follow-up action;
(ii) the Central Team will carry out rigorous investigation into all suspected abuse cases, and will conduct online patrols on the Internet to detect abuse cases involving sub-letting of PRH flats, etc; and
(iii) a series of publicity and education programmes have been organised to encourage the reporting of suspected abuse cases.
In this year, HD will deploy extra staff to the Central Team to step up action to tackle tenancy abuse and to conduct additional checks on income/assets declarations and occupancy-related cases. Estate staff will also step up patrols in some older PRH estates which are more prone to tenancy abuse.
In addition, the Long Term Housing Strategy review currently in progress will also assess the effectiveness of the so-called "Well-off Tenants Policies".
Thank you, President.
Ends/Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Issued at HKT 18:59
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