ENG-2014 — Page 225

Chapter 11

Housing

The government's policy objectives are to assist grassroots families to secure public rental housing to meet their basic housing needs; assist the public to choose accommodation according to their personal circumstances and what they can afford; provide subsidised sale flats to build a progressive housing ladder; and maintain the healthy and steady development of the private property market, with priority to be given to Hong Kong permanent residents' needs.

There were about 2,660,000 flats in Hong Kong as at December 2014, comprising about 780,000 public rental units', 400,000 subsidised sale flats and 1,490,000 private sector flats. About 29 per cent of Hong Kong's population live in public rental units, and another 17 per cent live in subsidised sale flats.

Long Term Housing Strategy

The government announced its Long Term Housing Strategy (LTHS) in December 2014, making an important policy shift by adopting a supply-led strategy to avert the current supply-demand imbalance.

The LTHS has three major directions: (1) to build more public rental housing (PRH) units and to ensure the rational use of existing resources; (2) to provide more subsidised sale flats, expand the forms of subsidised home ownership and facilitate the market circulation of existing stock; and (3) to stabilise the residential property market through steady land supply and appropriate demand management measures, and to promote good sales and tenancy practices for private residential properties.

Using the methodology recommended by the LTHS Steering Committee, the government has updated the projection of long term housing demand and adopted a new total housing supply target of 480,000 units for the ten-year period from 2015-16 to 2024-25 with a public-private split of 60:40. Accordingly, the public housing supply target will be 290,000 units (200,000 PRH units and 90,000 subsidised sale flats) and the private housing supply target will be 190,000 units. To maintain flexibility, the government will review the long term housing demand

1 Including public rental housing and interim housing flats under the Hong Kong Housing Authority and rental flats

under the Hong Kong Housing Society.

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