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Following is a question by the Hon Leung Yiu-chung and a written reply by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, in the Legislative Council today (November 16):
Question:
Given that public housing resources are heavily subsidised by public funds, the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA), in an effort to rationalise the use of such resources, has adopted a more stringent yardstick for dealing with under-occupation households since November 1, 2010 by narrowing the definition of serious cases of under-occupation households from that of an average living density of 35 square metres per person to 34 square metres per person. According to the information of the Housing Department (HD), the majority of the under-occupation households are one-person households living in two-bedroom flats. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) given that in response to the recommendations of the Report No. 48 of the Director of Audit (the Report) published in 2007, the Director of Housing (D of H) indicated that "since 2000, HA has converted approximately 49 000 flats originally intended for sale to rental flats, many of which are large flats. In order to rent out these large flats, the HA has relaxed the allocation standards so that these flats could be allocated to families with fewer members. They would become under-occupied households once there is a small change in the number of family members (e.g. when a three-person household becomes a two-person one)", whether the authorities have compiled statistics on the number of households which have been allocated larger flats as a result of the relaxation of allocation standards by HA since 2000; and of the number of one-bedroom or two-bedroom flats exceeding 34 square metres that have been allocated to two-person families as a result of this, instead of being allocated to three to four-person families according to the original standards;
(b) given that in response to the recommendations of the Report, the D of H also indicated that HD planned to tackle the issue of under-occupation households on the basis of the following guiding principle: "to avoid more acute shortage of small flats, instead of taking action to demand under-occupied households to move from large flats to small flats under the tenancy agreements, priority should be given to allocating flats to applicants on the waiting list and clearees (i.e. people affected by clearance operations and redevelopment projects)", whether HD has tackled the issue of under-occupation households in accordance with this guiding principle; if it has, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; in addition, given that the D of H on the one hand stated that "with nearly 70 000 applicants on the waiting list (two-thirds of total) being one-person or two-person families [in 2007], and the phasing out of the converted one-person flats (commonly known as 'split flats') and old-style Housing for Senior Citizens flats, the problem of inadequate supply has become more serious", and on the other hand transferred under-occupation households to one-person flats, whether this is inconsistent with that guiding principle; and
(c) given that in response to the recommendations of the Report, the D of H also indicated that "single-person households who are awaiting reunion with their family members from Mainland China are allowed to continue to reside in their flats even in the case of under-occupation", whether the authorities have compiled statistics on the current number of such households; if they have, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
To rationalise the use of limited public housing resources, the Housing Authority (HA) has put in place an under-occupation policy to require a household with excessive living space to move to another public rental housing (PRH) flat of an appropriate size.
In Chapter 5 of Report No. 48, the Audit Commission (AC) commented, among others, in paragraph 4.12 that "it is not an optimal use of public housing resources for flats to remain under-occupied for a prolonged period. The Housing Department (HD) needs to expedite action to deal with the problem of under-occupied flats so as to make them available to households in need", and recommended in paragraph 4.22(b) that the HD should "formulate a long-term strategy to address the problem of a large number of PRH flats which are under-occupied". In view of AC's recommendations, the HA endorsed a phased approach to address the problem of under-occupation in May 2007. Due to the limited supply of small flats for allocating to various categories of PRH applicants (including under-occupation households) at that time, the HA decided to give priority to handle the most serious under-occupation cases at living density exceeding 35 square metres per person and without elderly and disabled family members in the first two years.
To encourage under-occupation households to accept transfer arrangements, the HA decided to offer the affected households a total of four housing offers in their residing estate or an estate in the same District Council constituency, Domestic Removal Allowance and an opportunity for transfer to new estates, subject to availability of housing resources.
After implementation of the first phase, it was found that not all most serious under-occupation households needed to transfer to small PRH flats, as some of them moved out of their PRH flats voluntarily, or they were no longer most serious under-occupation households through the addition of new family members.
Since the first phase achieved satisfactory results and taking into account the number of small flats available for transfer of most serious under-occupation households at that time, the HA further endorsed in 2010 to redefine the most serious under-occupation cases as those with living density above 34 square metres per person and without elderly or disabled family members.
My reply to the three parts of the question is as follows:
(a) The HA converted 49 000 flats originally intended for sale to rental flats in 2000 in response to the then policy to cease the sale of Home Ownership Scheme flats. These flats are located in various districts (such as Urban, Tung Chung, Tin Shui Wai, Islands) and are in different types of buildings (such as new cruciform, concord and non-standard). Their areas range from small flats of around 17 square metres to 3-bedroom flats that are larger than 54 square metres. In view that the household size of Waiting List applicants was decreasing, and their demand for larger flats in both Tin Shui Wai and Tung Chung were generally not strong then, the HA decided to relax the allocation standard of some 3 600 3-bedroom flats in new cruciform blocks with an internal floor area (IFA) of 53.76 to 54.25 square metres to households of five persons or above, instead of six persons or above as originally intended; and some 4 900 3-bedroom flats with an IFA exceeding 49 square metres in Tin Shui Wai and Tung Chung to households of four persons or above instead of five or above, but priority was still accorded to households of five or more persons to ensure effective allocation of larger PRH flats. A total of about 1 270 5-person households were allocated 3-bedroom flats in the new cruciform blocks and 1 960 4-person households were allocated 3-bedroom flats in Tin Shui Wai and Tung Chung as at end March 2011. The allocation standards for other PRH flats including 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom flats have not been relaxed. Therefore, no 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom flats with an IFA exceeding 34 square metres have been allocated to 2-person households through this relaxation arrangement.
(b) In handling allocation of PRH, the HA has all along been adopting a flexible approach to ensure the effective use of limited public housing resources. The guiding principle adopted in 2007 is in line with the then situation of supply of small flats. Based on the existing situation, the Waiting List applicants have a strong demand for larger flats that exceed 34 square metres and can cater for 3 to 4 person households. According to our experience in handling under-occupation cases, the flats recovered from the under-occupation households were mostly one-bedroom flats suitable for 3 to 4 person households. Therefore, we need to continue our efforts in handling under-occupation cases to recover more large flats for re-allocation.
(c) The HA has all along adopted a practical, compassionate and rational approach to handle each case when implementing the under-occupation policy. For tenants who are expecting reunion with their family members from the Mainland in the near future, or who need to stay in the existing flat on medical or social grounds, etc, the HA will consider their individual merits subject to valid documentary proof. As the circumstances and reasons of affected tenants asking to stay on in their existing flats differ and their individual circumstances may also change at times, the HA does not have the statistics asked in this question.
Ends/Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Issued at HKT 12:27
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