ENG-2016 — Page 227

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Housing

The city finished building some 36,600 homes in 2016, comprising about 14,600 private-sector flats, excluding village houses, and around 22,000 public housing flats, comprising PRH and subsidised sale flats.

Housing Policy

The government provides PRH, mainly through the Hong Kong Housing Authority, to low- income families who cannot afford private rental accommodation. It aims to provide the first flat offer to general applicants, meaning family and elderly one-person applicants, at around three years on average in the long run.

The Housing Authority has a rolling five-year Public Housing Construction Programme to monitor the progress of each project. As at December 2016, about 70,800 PRH flats and 21,000 subsidised sale flats3 will be built over the five years from 2016-17.

It is the government's policy to maintain the healthy and stable development of the residential market. As at end-December, the estimated supply of first-hand private flats for the next three to four years was about 94,000 units.

Institutional Framework

The Secretary for Transport and Housing oversees housing matters, assisted by the Director of Housing, and is also the Housing Authority's chairman.

The Housing Department has both policy and operational responsibilities for providing PRH. It offers secretariat and executive support to the Housing Authority and its committees. As the Transport and Housing Bureau's housing arm, it also monitors the private market, ensures home buyers have access to accurate, comprehensive and transparent transaction information and oversees policy matters involving the regulation of estate agents.

The Housing Authority is a statutory body that implements most public housing programmes. It provides PRH to low-income families which cannot afford private rental accommodation and subsidised sale flats to low- to middle-income families. It also runs interim housing and transit centres for families facing short-term problems in finding suitable accommodation.

Public Rental Housing

In the fourth quarter, about 2.13 million people, or 29 per cent of the population, lived in public rental flats of the Housing Authority and Hong Kong Housing Society. There were about 148,800 PRH general applicants, and 133,500 non-elderly one-person applicants under the Quota and Points System (QPS). The average waiting times for general applicants was 4.7 years.

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Including Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) and Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Pilot Scheme (GSH) flats.

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 to PRH in the past 12 months.

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