Hong Kong housing authorities find enough land to provide 21,000 transitional flats by early 2025
- Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho says government’s years-long push to alleviate conditions of those waiting for public flats is starting to pay off
- ‘We are entering into the harvest season this year for the Housing Bureau’s efforts to push transitional housing projects,’ minister adds
Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin said on Saturday the government’s push over the last two years to provide more transitional homes had started to pay off.
“We are entering the harvest season this year for the Housing Bureau’s efforts to push transitional housing projects,” she said. “We’ve identified sufficient land to build about 21,000 flats, of which 13,600 are already in operation.
“This year, we will roll out more than 6,000 flats, and by early next year we will launch the remaining 1,200 flats to complete our target.”
The use of transitional housing is part of government efforts to provide short-term accommodation to people waiting to be allocated public flats.
Authorities have said they aimed to complete 84 transitional housing projects by 2024-25, with more than half of the promised flats to be in the New Territories.
Ho said it was affirming to see subdivided housing tenants move into transitional flats.
“It’s a relief to see that they are provided with transitional housing and move into a place with a decent and better living environment,” she said.
Authorities in recent years have also stepped up efforts to promote the policy, working with NGOs to use areas vacant in the short term and subsiding construction projects to increase supply.
But a study published last August by Polytechnic University’s Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation highlighted a variety of problems experienced by policy stakeholders.
Concerns raised with researchers included the short tenure offered for the flats, the limited scope of government funding and technical problems with the design and development process.
Other problems highlighted in the report involved concerns over occupancy rates of projects in remote locations, the extent of support service funding for tenants and the administrative burden of promoting the policy, as well as recruiting and screening prospective occupants.
The Housing Authority has attributed the increase to lower housing production and project delays last year.
Among the 13,700 flats it distributed last year, 12,900 were refurbished, with the majority in urban districts.
The authority added that applicants had generally had to wait longer, which affected the quarterly figure.
