TNAG-1607-FCO40-22122-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 202

QUESTION NO. 7

Reply by the Hon. D.P.H. Liao, CBE, JP, Secretary for District Administration," to the Hon. Richard Lai's Question in Legislative Council on Wednesday 7 January 1987

QUESTION:

Given that the supply of home ownership flats is still insufficient to satisfy the demand, there is no chance that all public housing tenants who apply will be successful in the ballotting for such flats. Since some of these tenants, though better-off, are still unable to afford to buy or rent flats in the private sector, will Government consider selling those modern public housing units with better design to the sitting tenants?

Sir,

The question of selling public rental flats

to sitting tenants has been considered from time to time.

by the Housing Authority and the Government. However, this

proposal is considered to be impractical at the present

time for the following reasons.

First, the solution to resolve Hong Kong's

housing problem must be in increasing our housing stock

to provide reasonable accommodation for those who are

inadequately housed. In 1986, this figure is estimated

to be over 380,000 households for all housing categories.

Amongst these are 112,000 squatter households and 170,000

applicants on the General Waiting List. On the basis of

producing 30,000 rental public housing units a year, the

/demand