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The Housing Department is inviting applications from tomorrow (January 26) from all public rental households living below seven square metres (m?) internal floor area (IFA) per person for transfer to a larger flat under a new transfer scheme.
"The Living Space Improvement Transfer Scheme (LSITS) is introduced on top of the existing Territory-wide Overcrowding Relief (TWOR) exercise held two or three times a year for which only 'overcrowded families' living below 5.5 m? per person can apply, the Deputy Director of Housing (Allocation & Commercial)," Mr Fung Ho-tong said.
Stressing that the existing 5.5 m? per person benchmark for overcrowding relief would be maintained, Mr Fung said that the TWOR exercises would continue with priority over other transfer schemes to provide relief for overcrowded households.
"Applicants for LSITS will be subject to the same set of eligibility criteria and flat selection priority in the order of living density, family size and length of tenancy as with TWOR applicants," Mr Fung said, adding that more than 40,000 households were eligible to apply for transfer under the two schemes.
A new measure allowing eligible TWOR and LSITS applicants with more than 10 years of residence to choose to move to any geographical districts has also been introduced recently.
At present, TWOR applicants in the New Territories are only allowed to select vacant flats in the New Territories estates, whereas Extended Urban (EB) applicants can select vacant flats in NT and EB estates and Urban (UB) applicants can select vacant flats in any districts.
"A lot of the overcrowded families living in the New Territories are unable to select a flat of their choice because the supply of vacant public rental housing (PRH) flats suitable for TWOR is unevenly distributed geographically," Mr Fung said.
"There has been no PRH production in New Territories East districts for some time and eight of the 14 existing PRH estates in the districts have been sold under the Tenants Purchase Scheme," he added.
The Housing Department's proactive efforts to provide relief opportunities in the past years have significantly lowered the number of overcrowded families from 19,988 households or 3.4% of total PRH households in September, 2000, to 5,784 households or 0.9% of total PRH households in September, 2005.
Non-overcrowded families are also given opportunities to move to larger flats through various transfer exercises launched from time to time. Tenants in need of improvement in living conditions on medical, social or other justifiable grounds can request internal or external transfer to another flat on individual merits.
Ends/Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Issued at HKT 15:01
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