***********************************************************
The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
The Housing Authority's Subsidised Housing Committee (SHC) today (May 15) endorsed measures to enhance the existing priority schemes for application of public rental housing (PRH) as well as housing arrangements for tenants in order to help foster harmonious families in PRH.
"To support the Government in fostering harmonious families, we endorsed improvements on the addition policy, transfer scheme, amalgamation of tenancies, and the two priority schemes for application of PRH through the waiting list namely, the Families with Elderly Persons Priority Scheme (FEP) and Special Scheme for Families with Elderly Persons (NFEP)," the Chairman of the SHC, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, said.
To facilitate the Government policy of "Ageing in Place" for the elderly, the addition policy is relaxed to include adult offspring (and their family members) of elderly tenants living alone and also households comprising all elderly members. The whole household has to undergo the Comprehensive Means Test (CMT) pitched at the level of the Housing Subsidy Policy (HSP) and Domestic Property Test (DPT) according to the current policy on addition.
Before the relaxation, adult children can only be granted conditional temporary stay to take care of the needy elderly tenants.
"We expect that the relaxation will benefit some 110 elderly tenants/households with about 200 adult offspring and their dependents granted with conditional temporary stay in PRH estates immediately," Professor Cheung said.
To promote the establishment of a family-based support network, the transfer scheme, which was designed to encourage the younger generation living in PRH to look after their elderly parents, will be enhanced. Up to 1,000 flats per annum mainly in urban and extended urban districts will be set aside for the scheme. Before the enhancement, only flats in the New Territories are available for transfer.
To guard against abuse, the younger families concerned should have at least resided in PRH estates for 10 years if they wish to move from a NT estate to an extended urban/urban estate or from an extended urban/islands estate to an urban estate to live with their elderly parents. However, a single child aged six or below can give the younger household an extra five years of residence but more children will not increase further the years of residence. The normal criteria for transfer in terms of the CMT and DPT will be waived.
The existing scheme on amalgamation of tenancies is also enhanced. The amalgamated household can go to any district and be offered new flats if they so choose, subject to the availability of resources. The requirement for the younger household to undertake to take care and live with the elderly will continue but the CMT and DPT will be waived.
Apart from the above three enhancement measures of housing arrangements, two other measures are also endorsed to improve the existing FEP and NFEP in the application for PRH.
"We have endorsed to shorten the minimum waiting time for both FEP and NFEP from two years to 18 months, which is shorter than the average waiting time of general applicants by at least seven months," Prof Cheung said.
"We estimated that out of the 6,400 FEP applicants, around 700 would become immediately due for allocation."
"For NFEP, we have relaxed the restriction in the choice of district from the New Territories only to any districts except the urban," he said.
Professor Cheung emphasised that the enhancement measures were consistent with the prevailing management and allocation policies. There should be no abuse or queue-jumping in the equitable allocation of PRH resources with the least impact on other waiting list applicants.
Ends/Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Issued at HKT 17:30
NNNN
