Unused spaces and storerooms in Hong Kong public housing estates converted into more than 200 flats for needy families
- Authority has been converting shared homes for elderly into public rental flats, leaving ancillary facilities vacant or underused
- Families wait for an average of 5½ years to be allocated a public rental flat
Idle spaces and storerooms in some public housing estates have been converted into more than 200 flats for needy families amid a dire shortage of affordable homes in Hong Kong.
In the 1990s, the Housing Authority introduced estates with shared flats for the elderly that had accompanying warden offices, quarters for welfare workers and storerooms, among other facilities.
Because of a rising number of disputes between some elderly residents over the years, the authority has been converting the homes into public rental flats, leaving such ancillary facilities vacant or underused.
Sitting on a potential resource of near-ready accommodation, the authority converted the idle spaces into 215 public rental flats scattered across 33 housing estates.
Among them, 37 were bought by tenants, generating sales revenue of HK$14 million (US$1.8 million).
“We have taken the opportunity to re-examine the usage of these facilities and found them technically feasible for conversion to normal [public rental ] flats,” an authority spokesman said on Wednesday.
A Hong Kong public housing flat sells for record HK$5.26 million
“We will closely monitor the usage of the remaining ancillary facilities … and continue to identify suitable facilities for conversion to [flats] to maximise utilisation of housing resources.”
Amid soaring property prices and a shortage of readily developable land, the government has struggled to build enough affordable housing in one of the world’s most expensive cities to buy and rent homes.
Families are on hold for an average of 5½ years to be allocated a public rental flat, the longest wait in almost two decades. Single elderly applicants wait an average of two years and 10 months.
Hong Kong’s housing shortage has forced more than 210,000 residents to live in subdivided flats where cramped spaces and squalid conditions are common.
The initiative came after the Ombudsman criticised the city’s biggest public housing provider for “[wasting] precious housing resources” in a report last year. It revealed that storerooms converted from spaces designed for ventilation in public estates were still left empty.
The watchdog’s investigation found that as of the end of August 2017, a total of 2,462 storerooms across 87 public estates were converted from such spaces. But 959 were vacant, making up a total area of more than 109,000 sq ft.
Rents for subdivided flats hit new high, concern group study shows
The Ombudsman’s report noted that some of the vacant storerooms were as big as 700 sq ft, although it also acknowledged that 68 per cent of them were smaller than 100 sq ft.
Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, chairman of the authority’s subsidised housing committee, said not all storerooms or underutilised spaces were suitable for conversion into homes as some were too small and would not be able to meet ventilation and lighting requirements.
But those that were converted, such as the latest ones, would help ease the wait for a public housing flat.
“I think it’s a very good move. We’ve not been able to build and provide enough public rental housing for the families on the waiting list,” Wong said.
