Average waiting time for public rental flat in Hong Kong drops to 5.6 years as housing chief says future homes could be bigger
- Government may be able to build bigger flats when it dominates land supply and has accelerated development procedures, Winnie Ho says
- Housing secretary adds administration will try to extend lease of light public housing sites so tenants do not need to move out until public rental flats are ready
The average waiting time for a public rental flat in Hong Kong has dropped to 5.6 years, authorities have said, while the housing chief has expressed optimism that the minimum size of homes could be raised but cautioned any increase would only come later in the decade.
The Housing Authority on Wednesday announced the wait time had fallen from six years, reaching levels last reported in September 2020, mainly due to the allocation of more than 10,000 rental flats in the third quarter.
Speaking to the Post before the shorter waiting time was revealed, Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin reaffirmed the government’s commitment to boosting the public housing supply to further shorten the queue. She also expressed hope authorities could set a larger minimum size for public flats in the future.
“When the government dominates land supply in the future, and when we have accelerated land development and procedures, we may have the conditions to further raise the minimum flat size requirement,” Ho said on Tuesday.
“But I believe it can only be done in the latter part of the last five years in the decade as it would take a similar time to digest the public housing wait.”
Currently, there are about 135,500 general households, including single elderly applicants waiting for units, along with about 99,100 non-elderly one-person applicants.
