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Housing
Three major directions are set out in the strategy: to provide more PRH and ensure the rational use of resources; to provide more subsidised sale flats, expand the forms of subsidised home ownership and facilitate market circulation of existing stock; and to stabilise the residential market through steady land supply and demand-side management measures, and promote good sales and tenancy practices for private residential properties.
In December, the government announced a total housing supply target of 460,000 flats for the 10 years from 2018-19 to 2027-28, maintaining the public-private split at 60:40. Accordingly, the public housing supply target is 280,000 units, comprising 200,000 PRH units and 80,000 subsidised sale flats, and the private housing supply target is 180,000 units. The government updates the long-term housing demand projection annually and presents a rolling 10-year supply target to reflect changing circumstances.
The city finished building some 31,840 homes in 2017, comprising about 17,800 private-sector flats, excluding village houses, and 14,040 public housing flats, comprising PRH and subsidised sale flats.
Housing Policy
The government provides PRH, mainly through the Housing Authority, to low-income families who cannot afford private rental accommodation. The Housing Authority's target is to provide the first flat offer to general applicants, meaning family and elderly one-person applicants, at around three years on average.
The Housing Authority has a rolling five-year Public Housing Construction Programme to monitor the progress of each project. As at December 2017, about 73,400 PRH flats and 23,400 subsidised sale flats would be built over the five years from 2017-18.
It is the government's policy to maintain the healthy and stable development of the residential market. As at end-December, the estimated supply of first-hand private flats for the next three to four years was about 97,000 units.
Public Rental Housing
In the fourth quarter, about 2.14 million people, or 29 per cent of the population, lived in public rental flats of the Housing Authority and Hong Kong Housing Society3. There were about 155,100 PRH general applicants, and 127,800 non-elderly one-person applicants under the Quota and Points System (QPS). The average waiting time for general applicants was 4.7 years.
The Housing Authority's long-established policy is to set affordable PRH rents. Its rents include rates, management and maintenance costs, and averaged about $1,880 within the range of
3
The Housing Society is an independent, not-for-profit organisation. One of its major functions is to provide subsidised housing to target groups at affordable rents and prices.
Waiting time refers to the time taken between registration for PRH and the first flat offer, excluding any frozen period during the application period, such as when the applicant has not yet fulfilled the residence requirement, has requested to put the application on hold pending the arrival of family members for a family reunion, or is imprisoned. The average waiting time for general applicants refers to the average of the waiting times of those general applicants who were housed to PRH in the past 12 months.
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