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Following is a question by the Hon Starry Lee and a written reply by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, in the Legislative Council today (February 29):
Question:
It has been reported that in a public housing estate in Tung Chung which has been in occupation for almost seven years, nearly one hundred large units which can accommodate six to nine persons are suspected to have been unoccupied, and some flats are in such brand new state that even the plastic tapes over the door viewers and plastic wrappers over the handles have not been taken off. The report indicated that a large number of units have been left vacant for years, resulting in a waste of public housing resources. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) in each public housing estate, other than those unpopular public rental housing (PRH) units to be allocated under the Express Flat Allocation Scheme, of the respective current numbers of units available for lease which have been left vacant for one year, one to two years, two to four years and over four years and not yet been allocated to public housing applicants; among them, the respective numbers of those units for families of one person, two persons, three to four persons, and five persons and more, and set out the breakdown in table form;
(b) of the causes for the aforesaid PRH units being left vacant for a long time;
(c) of the amounts of rental income foregone by the Housing Department in each of the past five years as a result of the aforesaid PRH units being left vacant; and
(d) of the measures taken by the authorities in the past five years to minimise the circumstances of PRH units being left vacant for a long time; whether they have plans to convert large units which have been left vacant for a long time into smaller ones; if they have, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply :
President,
The Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) has all along been upholding the principle of optimisation of resources. As soon as newly completed units or refurbished units become available, they are allocated to applicants on the Waiting List (WL) and other rehousing categories such as transfer and compassionate rehousing (CR). Whether the applicants accept the housing offers is a matter of personal choice. Apart from the less popular units that have not been accepted after repeated offers, vacant units in general include recovered units awaiting refurbishment, units reserved to cater for the rehousing of people affected by estate redevelopment/ clearances or government clearances, etc.
The reply to the four-part question is as follows:
(a) and (b) To optimise the use of public housing resources, Housing Department (HD) will arrange allocation in a flexible manner, and public housing units of different types and sizes have their respective ranges of allocation. For example, a two-bedroom Harmony unit can be allocated to four to six-person households. As such, the HD does not have the breakdown of vacant public rental housing (PRH) units not yet allocated by the methodology as stipulated in the question.
Apart from those units which have previously been put under the Express Flat Allocation Scheme (EFAS) to speed up allocation, as at December 2011, the numbers of rental units in estates that have not been allocated to PRH applicants for less than one year, one to two years, two to four years, and four years and above respectively are as follows:
< 1 year 1 to 2 2 to 4 > 4 years
years years
Number
of units 1 432 79* 49 0
* include 14 units where reservation is no longer necessary and will be arranged for letting soon.
The above 1 432 units that have been left vacant for less than one year include new and recently recovered units. The HD, apart from allocating them to WL applicants, will also let them through various transfer schemes such as Territory-wide Overcrowding Relief; Living Space Improvement and Special Transfer Schemes, as well as via CR.
In general, the HD will put units without being let out and have been left vacant for one year or above under the EFAS. A 50% rent reduction for eight to 12 months (see paragraph (d) below) will also be offered to expedite the leasing out of such units.
Regarding the 114 units which have been vacant for one year or above as shown in the above table (including 65 units vacant for 1 to 2 years and 49 units vacant for 2 to 4 years), these units are mainly reserved for compulsory removals such as the HA's estate redevelopment/clearance or Government clearance projects. As the clearance exercises usually involve a large number of families, sufficient and appropriate PRH resources must be reserved for rehousing purpose in order to ensure their timely completion.
(c) As mentioned above, in order to optimise the use of public housing resources, whenever new projects are completed or vacant units are refurbished, the HD will let them out as soon as possible. However, under certain circumstances, some units have to be left vacant for a period of time. For example, units that need to be reserved to cater for the specific needs of individual rehousing categories. Units that are vacant for one year or more without letting are mainly reserved for compulsory transfer usage of HA's estate redevelopment/clearance or government clearance projects. The issue of loss in rental income does not arise under the above circumstances.
(d) Regarding units that are less popular, the HD has taken a multi-pronged approach to optimise the use of the valuable public housing resources and to expedite the leasing out of those units. These measures include:
(i) Provision of 50% rent reduction for eight months in respect of units left vacant for 12 months to less than 24 months;
(ii) Provision of 50% rent reduction for 12 months in respect of units left vacant for 24 months or above; and
(iii) Implementation of the EFAS annually to let out less popular units, and thus speeding up the allocation of PRH units to the WL applicants who have joined the scheme.
At present, the demand for large units remains strong and PRH units accommodating larger households are in short supply. Having regard to the relevant factors, we consider that although the letting rate of such units in relatively remote areas is lower than that of other PRH units, there is a need to retain these large units to meet the demand of applicants with a large household size.
Ends/Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Issued at HKT 11:55
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