Hong Kong, 17 Oct (China News Service) -- The Secretary for Transport and Housing of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Mr. Chen Fan, issued a blog post on the 17th, pointing out that with the aging of the social population and the "low birthrate", the decline in the average number of households in Public Housing in Hong Kong has become a trend, bringing further challenges to the SAR Government. Under the limitation of insufficient land, the shortage of public housing units has become more severe.
In a blog post entitled "Working Together to Increase the Supply of PRH" published on the same day, Chan Fan pointed out that according to the HKSAR Government's "Housing Statistics 2020", the average number of prying housing households in 2006 was 3.0, but it has dropped to 2.8 in 2014 and 2.7 in 2019. Thus, the average number of PRH households has been declining over the past 10 years, which explains why even in the past five financial years (i.e. from 2015/16 to 2019/20) a total of about 66,900 PRH flats have been completed, the number of PRH residents has only risen from about 2.13 million to about 2.19 million. Due to the decline in the average number of households, the per capita living area of public housing has also increased from 12.2 square meters at the end of March 2007 to 13.4 square meters at the end of March this year.
He pointed out that the continued downward trend in the average number of households in public housing will pose further challenges to the HKSAR Government. As the resources required to build a PRH are relatively fixed, the decline in the average number of households means that even with the same resources invested, the number of beneficiaries staying in PRH has decreased relative to the past. If the number of beneficiaries staying in PRH is to remain at a similar level or even increase as in the past, the HKSAR Government needs to devote more resources to the construction of more PRH flats. However, due to the limitations of insufficient land, the shortage of PUBLIC HOUSING units has become more severe.
Chan Fan mentioned that in his 2019 annual progress report on the Long-Term Housing Strategy last year, he said that assuming that the land already found at that time could be successfully launched for housing construction as scheduled, the HKSAR Government could build 272,000 public housing units in the 10 years from 2020/21. To implement the housing targets set out in the Long Term Housing Strategy, the HKSAR Government will continue to strive to enhance the development potential of the land and adopt comprehensive planning and design tailored to local conditions to fully match the site situation and the ratio of land plots, with a view to increasing the amount of housing construction.
Chen Fan stressed that finding land and building houses is the fundamental way to solve the housing problem in the long run. The HKSAR Government will continue to increase the supply of land through short-, medium- and long-term measures, and with the concerted efforts of all sectors of the community, it is hoped that the supply of public housing can be accelerated and increased, and every effort will be made to provide suitable housing for the public. (End)
Source: China News Network
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