ENG-1989 — Page 219

HOUSING

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four estates. In the next five years, an average of 50 lifts will be replaced each year, and in the five years after that, replacement work will be stepped up to 100 lifts each year.

As the estates get older, the age pattern of residents changes, creating the need for new facilities to be provided. So far 43 nurseries, youth centres and accommodation for the elderly and disabled have been added and 19 are being constructed. Forty-one classrooms were added to 23 primary and secondary schools at a cost of $17.5 million.

Improvement work was carried out at eight commercial shopping centres. In the middle-aged estates and those not included in the redevelopment programme, where the environment and facilities have started to fall behind, measures have been taken to improve the quality of life.

Home Ownership Scheme

To meet the community's growing aspirations, the government established the Home Ownership Scheme in the late 1970s to help lower-middle-income families and public housing tenants to become home owners by providing flats for sale at prices below market value.

Before April 1, 1988, the Housing Authority acted on the government's behalf in admin- istering the HOS, using government funds. With the re-organisation of the authority on that date, it took over the responsibility for the scheme.

Private sector applicants for HOS flats may not own domestic property and are subject -to a household income limit of $10,000 per month. These restrictions, however, do not apply to public rental estate tenants. The income restriction is also not applicable to res- idents of Temporary Housing Areas and cottage areas managed by the authority, house- holds displaced by clearance of squatter areas for development, natural disaster victims and junior civil servants.

Since the scheme started in 1978, a total of 119 000 flats, including 39 000 produced under the complementary PSPS, have been sold to eligible families. About 45 per cent of these families were public housing tenants who were required to surrender their rental flats to the authority on obtaining HOS flats. Since the beginning of 1985, 7 500 flats have been sold to prospective public housing tenants, who were, in return, required to forego their rights to rental accommodation.

To encourage public housing tenants to become home owners and therefore give up their rental accommodation for families who are in greater need of public housing, public housing tenants are accorded higher priority than private sector applicants in select- ing HOS flats. This incentive is also extended to prospective public housing tenants, so that rental flats which would have been allocated to them can be let to applicants in greater need.

The authority ensures the provision of adequate mortgage funding from financial institutions for the purchase of HOS and PSPS flats. In return for the authority's indemnity for an institution's loss in case of default, purchasers are able to enjoy favourable mortgage terms provided by over 50 financial institutions. Public sector priority status purchasers are able to borrow up to 95 per cent of the purchase price and private sector purchasers up to 90 per cent, with repayment periods of up to 20 years,

Implementation of the Long Term Housing Strategy has required an increase in production of HOS/PSPS flats from the previous level of 10 000 flats a year to around 17 500 flats a year for the period 1989 to 1994. Of these, about 27 per cent of annual production will be upgraded flats in blocks originally intended for rental housing estates, thus providing a wider choice of flat sizes, standards, locations and prices for applicants.