The average waiting time for Hong Kong public housing units has remained at 5.3 years for general applicants, according to the latest government figures.
The Housing Authority revealed on Wednesday that the average wait for general applicants to be housed in government-subsidised rental units for the year up to the end of June was 5.3 years, the same as it was in March.
The wait for single elderly applicants also remained the same, at 3.9 years.
Chief Executive John Lee has made tackling Hong Kong’s housing crisis one of his administration’s key agendas. In his maiden Policy Address last October, he vowed to reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to four and a half years within four years.
Last March, the average wait stood at 6.1 years, its highest since March 1998, when it was over six and a half years.
Asked on RTHK’s English-language Hong Kong Today programme on Thursday whether she expected the average waiting time to fall further, Cleresa Wong of the Housing Authority said: “I think there is hope that we can further reduce the waiting time, say starting from the year 2026-27. I’m saying so because the number of flats produced [by] then would increase substantially.”
In the short term, Wong said the average waiting time would depend on several factors.
“Actually the number of flats available for allocation and the average waiting time [are] not necessarily in direct proportion to each other,” Wong said, adding that “for applicants who have applied for urban area public flats, their average waiting time on the whole is much longer.”
According to the Housing Authority’s Wednesday statement, a “substantial number” of units in the New Territories, where the waiting time is generally shorter, were available for allocation in the past few quarters.
As of the end of June, there remained around 133,100 general applicants for public housing. Additionally, there were some 96,900 “non-elderly one-person applicants,” who are allocated housing according to a ratings system and thus excluded from the waiting time.
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