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Housing
Three strategic directions are set out: to provide more PRH and ensure the rational use of existing resources; to provide more SSFs, 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.
According to the strategy, the government updates the long-term housing demand projection annually and presents a rolling 10-year housing supply target to capture social, economic and market changes over time. In December, the government announced a total supply target of 450,000 units for the 10 years from 2019-20 to 2028-29, and revised the public-private split of new supply from 60:40 to 70:30. Accordingly, the public housing supply target is 315,000 units, comprising 220,000 PRH/Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme (GSH) flats and 95,000 SSFs, while the private housing supply target is 135,000 units.
The city finished building some 46,000 homes in 2018, comprising about 21,000 private residential flats, excluding village houses, and 25,000 public housing flats, comprising PRH and SSFs.
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 Housing Construction Programme to monitor the progress of each project. As at December 2018, about 72,900 PRH/GSH units and 24,600 SSFs would be built over the five years from 2018-19.
It is the government's policy to maintain healthy development of the residential market. As at end-December, about 93,000 first-hand private residential flats were estimated to become available in the next three to four years.
Public Rental Housing
In the fourth quarter, about 2.18 million people, or 29 per cent of the population, lived in public rental units of the Housing Authority and Hong Kong Housing Society3. As at end-December, there were about 150,200 PRH general applications and, under the Quota and Points System (QPS), about 117,400 non-elderly one-person applications. The average waiting time for general applicants was 5.5 years.
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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 in PRH in the past 12 months.
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