A critical review of the housing policies on tackling under-occupation of public rental housing flats in Hong Kong

Abstract

Similar to many other countries, in Hong Kong, housing has long been a very difficult issue to manage. It is also one of the pressing social issues that the government has to face with urgently and tactfully. Given by the exorbitant high property prices and landlords increase their properties rent in recent years, the current problem in Hong Kong is a great deal number of people, especially the young generation, cannot afford to buy home or even rent apartment in private property market. Thinking despairingly that home-owning is an unrealistic dream, most people applied for Public Rental Housing as their last resort to be housed. This sort of thinking is somewhat shown by the growing number of applicants in Waiting List for public rental housing flats. The growing number of applicants, by and large, indicating the demand of subsidized housing has never been subsided and also meant applicants need to wait much longer for allocation.

Unfortunately, supply of flats has persistently fallen short of demand. There has been no adequate increase in subsidized flats’ supply in the past few years. The number of completed flats in 2012 is really not comparable with the number of applicants in the queue for public housing. Even, by adding the 15,000 new units each year as committed by the chief executive Mr. CY LEUNG, the public housing stock still cannot effectively satisfy the overwhelming demand of public rental housing. In view of the lack of supply of new flats, there has been demanded that the Government should act creatively to provide more flats to ensure quick allocation. Under this circumstance, the better utilization of existing PRH stock is becoming more essential and important.

It is not hard to find from various sources that there are already many studies in evaluating the efficacy of the so called “well-off tenants policies”, such as the Housing Subsidy Policy, while little studies touch on the issue of under-occupation situation of public flats –an rather unfair phenomenon that the average living density of a household is more than allowed. Under-occupation policy is the policy implemented by the Housing Authority for maximizing the rational utilization of public housing resources so that larger subsidized flats can be recovered and reallocated to those in genuine needs and reducing unnecessary wastage of precious housing resources.

In view of this, the dissertation is going to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy on under-occupation implemented by Housing Authority. In order to response the criticism on the equity and fairness towards the under-occupation issue, the dissertation is also written with an aim to evaluate these aspects and explores with objective assessment by adopting qualitative research methods, such as surveys and questionnaires. Questionnaires will be dispatched to residents in various housing estates to collect necessary information and opinions for analysis the equity and effectiveness of the policy. Hypothetical analysis and literature reviews will also be conducted through comparing different related official publications and journals.

This dissertation is going to evaluate, based on empirical study and literature review, the implication and effectiveness of the policy adopted by Housing Authority to tackle on the problem of under-occupation of public rental housing flats and, with great ambition, make viable suggestions for the authority to cogitate and refine the performance of the policy.