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Debate on review of Home Ownership Scheme
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Housing, Mr Dominic Wong, in the Legislative Council on motion debate on review of Home Ownership Scheme today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I have listened with great interest to comments made by Honourable Members on various aspects of the Home Ownership Scheme, and am grateful for their views and suggestions. I shall respond briefly to the main points raised.
Number of flats, pace of production and proportion
Since the introduction of subsidised flats for sale in 1978, over 209,000 flats have been sold under the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) and its sister scheme, the Private Sector Participation Scheme (PSPS). In the first few years, the average annual production was about 5,000 flats. Average annual production increased to about 13,000 flats between 1982 and 1990, representing about 30% of public sector flat production. Since 1991, the proportion has been adjusted to allow for the target production of roughly the same number of public rental flats and flats for sale in order to reflect the community's increasing prosperity and rising aspirations for home ownership. Even so, demand in recent sale exercises has exceeded supply by about 15 times. We have already announced the target of building another 148,000 subsidised flats for sale to low income families over the next six years.
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We agree that the HOS and the PSPS play an important role in promoting home ownership which fosters a sense of belonging and contributes to social stability in Hong Kong. Moreover, these two schemes have assisted, in particular, about 120,000 public rental housing tenants to become home owners and consequently have enabled the Housing Department to recover over 83,000 rental flats for allocation to others in greater need on the general waiting list. I thank the Honourable Selina Chow for her support of home ownership in various forms. We will review the rate and proportion of HOS/PSPS flat production in relation to public rental flats beyond the year 2001 in the context of the Long Term Housing Strategy review which will commence towards the end of this year.