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The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
The Housing Authority has further relaxed housing arrangements for families with elderly persons. The new measures will become effective in January 2009.
The authority's Subsidised Housing Committee has endorsed a number of new measures after reviewing various schemes for fostering harmonious families in public rental housing.
¡§The five enhanced housing schemes for fostering harmonious families introduced in October 2007 have been well received. About 6,000 families have benefited from the schemes so far,¡¨ chairman of the committee Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said today (October 24).
¡§To encourage more younger families to take care of their elderly parents, we have decided to further relax some of the requirements,¡¨ he said.
The new arrangements include replacing two schemes which look after public housing applicants on the waiting list - the "Families with Elderly Persons Priority Scheme" and "Special Scheme for Families with Elderly Persons", by one single scheme - the "Harmonious Families Priority Scheme".
Under the new scheme, applicants will be awarded a six-month credit waiting time. For applicants with a nuclear family and elderly family members, the requirement for their choosing to live in two near-by flats for mutual care has been relaxed. Under the new arrangement, only one elderly member should be included in the application, instead of at least two as presently required. These applicants may opt for flats in any non-Urban Waiting List Districts.
Any applying household with at least one elderly member, which chooses to live under one roof, can still opt for a flat in any Districts.
The "Harmonious Families Addition Scheme" and "Harmonious Families Amalgamation Scheme" will continue to apply. About 2,000 and 150 families living in public rental housing estates have already benefited from these two schemes respectively since their implementation last year.
The "Harmonious Families Transfer Scheme", which also targets public housing tenants, has benefited 170 families so far. Under the new arrangements, applicants who want to move to a more popular Waiting List District need only fulfil the residence length requirement of living in public rental housing for seven years instead of 10 years.
For families with children below the age of 6 or an expected child of 16 weeks of gestation or above, the requirement on residence length will remain as five years. A quota of 1,000 units will be set aside for the next exercise of this scheme. The two-month application period will begin in December.
¡§These enhanced housing arrangements, which offer the families choices of living together or closer to each other, will help promote mutual care between two generations and alleviate the problem of elderly people being left alone.
¡§The Housing Department can recover more small units for re-allocation to needy families through amalgamation of tenancies. The size of the waiting list can also be reduced through the addition scheme,¡¨ Prof Cheung said.
Ends/Friday, October 24, 2008
Issued at HKT 15:16
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