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The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
The Housing Authority's Subsidised Housing Committee (SHC) endorsed today (June 13) a set of enhanced measures to tackle under-occupation (UO) in public rental housing (PRH) estates to safeguard the rational use of valuable public housing resources. The new measures will take effect from this October.
A spokesman for the HA said, "Since the majority of the current Prioritised Under- occupation (PUO) cases with a living density of 34 square metres per person have been resolved, we will adjust downward the threshold for one-person households under the category to 30 sq m per person (Appendix 1), which is a 20 per cent allowance as compared with the prevailing UO standard of 25 sq m per person (Appendix 2) and the revised thresholds for different family sizes will be set riding on this mechanism."
"However, households with disabled members or elderly members aged 70 or above will be excluded from the UO list and those households with members aged 60 or above but below 70 would be placed at the end of the list for transfer under the new arrangements until the next review exercise," he added.
Among some 1 600 successfully transferred PUO cases captured in the past two years, about 1 500 (92 per cent) were resolved with three offers or less. "As such, the HA decided to provide the PUO households with a maximum of three housing offers in line with the Waiting List (WL) mechanism. The tenancy of those who refuse all the offers without justified reasons will be terminated. However, we will continue to provide the existing PUO cases with a maximum of four housing offers in order to minimise the impact on these households," he said.
In the past five years, about 40 000 new cases have been identified due to deletion of family members arising from moving out or death. Discounting 21 000 cases resolved during the corresponding period, the number of UO households increased to about 54 500 as at this March, representing an increase of 54 per cent in the past five years.
"In view of the competing demands for small PRH flats in the coming three years from other rehousing categories, including WL applicants, it is anticipated that we will not be able to solve all UO cases within a short period of time and that the number of UO cases will continue to rise. As such, members consider it appropriate to maintain the current UO standards for the time being and focus our efforts to tackle the PUO cases in order to recover more large flats for re-allocation to eligible applicants," he continued.
To help UO households get used to a new living environment, members also decided to continue the existing measures and incentives by offering them a flat, including the new ones, in the residing estate or an estate within the same District Council constituency as long as suitable resources are available. A Domestic Removal Allowance will be granted upon transfer to smaller flats.
Some households that were rehoused under a relaxed allocation policy in estate redevelopment or similar exercises and have now become PUO households have requested exemption. "According to the existing policy all PRH tenants, irrespective of their rehousing categories, including Civil Service Quota, clearance projects and the WL, are subject to the same set of housing policies such as divorce, addition/deletion, Rent Assistance Scheme and Housing Subsidy Policy. To maintain policy consistency, these households should not be given privileges and we have to be fair to all," said the spokesman.
To rationalise the use of heavily subsidised public housing resources, since 1992 the HA has required those households with living space exceeding the prescribed UO standards to move to another PRH flat of appropriate size. The UO situation was reviewed in 2007 and 2010 respectively. The new arrangements will be reviewed after three years of implementation.
Ends/Thursday, June 13, 2013
Issued at HKT 20:12
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