Following is a question by the Hon Jeremy Tam and a written reply by the Acting Secretary for Transport and Housing, Dr Raymond So Wai-man, in the Legislative Council today (December 13):
 
Question:
 
     In October last year, the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) put up King Tai Court in San Po Kong, a pilot project under the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme (GSH), for sale. In respect of King Tai Court, HA has adopted the same definition of "Green Form applicants" as that for the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS), i.e. Green Form applicants include public rental housing (PRH) tenants and PRH applicants who have passed the detailed eligibility vetting and obtained a Green Form Certificate (GF Certificate). Moreover, the Chief Executive indicated in the Policy Address she delivered in October this year that future public housing developments should include more GSH units instead of PRH units, and she had already requested HA to complete the relevant review as soon as possible, with a view to regularising GSH. She has also pointed out that as the general PRH tenants are required, upon purchasing GSH units, to vacate and surrender the units in which they have been residing, the waiting time for applicants on the PRH Waiting List will not be affected. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council of:
 
(1) the number of PRH units surrendered by PRH tenants in each of the past five years, with a breakdown by the reason for surrendering the units (e.g. the tenants concerned had purchased (i) the HOS units put up for sale by HA, (ii) the second-hand premium-unpaid units in HOS estates, (iii) the second-hand premium-unpaid units in Tenants Purchase Scheme estates, and (iv) GSH units);
 
(2) the top 10 PRH estates with the largest number of tenants who have surrendered their PRH units after purchase of the units of King Tai Court, and the number of units involved in each estate; the respective numbers of such PRH tenants who, at the time when they subscribed for the units of King Tai Court, were required to pay (i) 1.5 times net rent plus rates and (ii) double net rent plus rates under the "Well-off Tenants Policies" of HA; and
 
(3) the respective numbers of owners of King Tai Court who are (i)‍ GF Certificate holders on the PRH Waiting List, (ii) those GF Certificate holders who resided in PRH units previously but whose names have been deleted from the PRH tenancies due to divorce/splitting, and (iii) junior civil servants who meet the eligibility criteria for applying for Civil Service Public Housing Quota?
  
Reply:
 
President,
 
     The Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) launched the Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme (GSH) pilot project King Tai Court in San Po Kong in October 2016. All 857 flats of the project were sold. Buyers have been taking over the flats from June 2017 onwards. HA is conducting a comprehensive review on the GSH pilot, which is expected to be completed in early 2018. 
 
     My consolidated reply to the question raised by the Hon Jeremy Tam is as follows.
 
     A breakdown of the number of public rental housing (PRH) units recovered by HA from 2012/13 to 2016/17 is set out at Appendix.
 
     Among the 857 buyers of King Tai Court, 800 were HA's sitting PRH tenants. The PRH units surrendered distributed throughout Hong Kong in more than 160 public housing estates. The distribution by region is as below:
 

Region	Number
Urban	468
Extended Urban	220
New Territories	109
Islands	3
Total	800

  
     Among them, 71 and 27 households were paying 1.5 times and double net rent plus rates respectively under the "Well-off Tenants Policies" at the time of purchase.
 
     The remaining 57 buyers of King Tai Court are as below:
 

Buyers' category	Number
Tenants of the Hong Kong Housing Society's rental estates	28
PRH applicants who have passed the detailed eligibility vetting	16
Junior civil servants whose eligibility under the Civil Service Public Housing Quota Scheme has been established	12
PRH residents eligible for PRH allocation due to divorce/splitting	1
Total	57

 

Ends/Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Issued at HKT 12:25

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