HOUSING
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Buy or Rent Option
Eligible prospective tenants, including Waiting List applicants, will soon be offered an option to buy their housing units instead of renting them.
Housing for Groups in Special Need
The Elderly
There are two priority schemes for public rental flats which encourage families to live with and take care of their elderly members. Families with elderly parents or dependent relatives aged 60 or above who have applied under the Families with Elderly Persons Priority Scheme will have their housing allocation advanced by three years. Nuclear families with two elderly members who have applied under the Special Scheme for Families with Elderly Persons will be allocated two separate flats in the same block in a new town two years before normal allocation.
An elderly person who prefers to live away from the family can apply for a Housing for Senior Citizens unit or a self-contained flat under the Single Elderly Persons Priority Scheme, and will be allocated a public rental unit within two or four years respectively. Two or more elderly persons who are willing to live together may apply under the Elderly Persons Priority Scheme under which flats are allocated within two years. So far, more than 42 900 elderly households have benefited from these schemes.
Families with at least one elderly member will also have their HOS/PSPS/FFSS application priorities upgraded. Eligible HPLS applicants living with elderly members will be similarly be accorded higher priority.
The HA is exploring ways to increase the provision of small flats for the elderly and Housing for Senior Citizen units. The target is to provide 30 000 public rental flats for allocation to single elderly people from 1997-98 to 2001–02.
The Senior Citizen Residence Scheme is an innovative housing scheme for the elderly under which the HKHS will build community-based housing developments comprising self-contained units with specialised support facilities and services for sale to senior citizens on a 'lease for life'. Construction work for about 500 units in Tseung Kwan O and Jordan Valley will start in 1999 and be completed by the end of 2001.
Interim Housing
Interim housing provides accommodation for people who are rendered homeless for one reason or another but are not eligible for permanent public housing. In addition to the existing three types of interim housing: old-type low-rise timber structures (to be cleared by 2000), multi-storey vertical interim housing (converted from redeveloped blocks in some older estates) and prefabricated interim housing blocks, a new form of vertical interim housing is being built in Tuen Mun and Tin Shui Wai. These high-rise blocks will meet the continuing, long-term need for this type of accommodation.
Transit Centres provide free emergency shelters for the homeless and victims of fires and natural disasters, pending assessment of their eligibility for rehousing to