'Subsidise People Waiting For Public Flats'

A member of the Housing Authority has called on the to government to consider subsidising the rent for people who have waited years for public housing.

Chua Hoi-wai's comments come after official figures for the end of March show that general applicants now have to wait over five years on average before being allocated a flat, a rise of several months from the end of 2017, and drastically longer than the government's target of three years.

Single, elderly people, meanwhile, were waiting around 2.8 years, up from 2.6 years.

The longer waits for a public flat come despite a fall of around 1,800 people in the queue as of the end of March, to 153,300.

These figures don't include the 119,000 non-elderly one-person applications under the separate Quota and Points System.

Chua, who's also the chief executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, says a lot of people need government help.

He said: "If they really cannot achieve the target, and the waiting time has been extended so long, I would say that the government should reconsider whether they can give some kind of housing rental supplement to those on the waiting list, especially for those with very low income, and those who are living in very indecent housing environment."

Meanwhile a member of the government-appointed Task Force on Land Supply, Stephen Wong, said the longer waiting time for public housing highlights how urgent it is for society to decide on ways to increase land supply.

He said: "There's a huge problem, because as we laid out in the consultation document, there is obviously a huge lack of land for public as well as private housing. And according to government data, the projection for the next 10 years is pretty dismal as well, so it is obviously a grave situation."

The task force is consulting the public on 18 different options to increase land supply, including reclamation, developing brownfield sites and building on the periphery of country parks.