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Housing

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

Under the LTHS, the government updates the long-term housing demand projection annually and presents a rolling 10-year housing supply target to reflect social, economic and market changes over time. In December, the government announced the total supply target of 430,000 units for the 10 years from 2021-22 to 2030-31, with the public-private split of new housing supply maintained at 70:30. The public housing supply target is 301,000 units, comprising 210,000 PRH/Green Form Subsidised Home Ownership Scheme (GSH) flats and 91,000 Other SSFs, while the private housing supply target is 129,000 units. The government has identified 330 hectares of land capable of providing 316,000 public housing units, sufficient to meet the supply target of 301,000 public housing units in the next 10 years.

Some 35,100 homes were completed in 2020, comprising about 20,900 private residential flats (excluding village houses) and about 14,200 public housing flats, comprising PRH and SSFs.

Housing Policy

The government provides PRH, mainly through the Housing Authority, to low-income families who cannot afford private rental accommodation. The Housing Authority's target is to provide the first flat offer to general applicants, meaning family and elderly one-person applicants, at around three years on average.

The Housing Authority has a rolling five-year Housing Construction Programme to monitor the progress of each project. At December, about 67,100 PRH and GSH units and 28,100 Other SSFS were expected to be built over the five years from 2020-21.

The government's policy is to maintain healthy development of the residential property market. At year end, it was estimated about 92,000 first-hand private residential flats would become available in the next three to four years.

Public Rental Housing

In the fourth quarter of 2020, about 2.21 million people, or 30 per cent of the population, lived in public rental units of the Housing Authority and Hong Kong Housing Society3. At year end, there were about 153,900 PRH applications from general applicants and, under the Quota and Points System (QPS), about 99,500 non-elderly one-person applications. The average waiting time4 for general applicants was 5.7 years.

3 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.

4

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 asked 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 in PRH in the past 12 months.

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