Waiting time for Hong Kong public rental flats climbs to 5.6 years, and figure expected to temporarily rise next year

The government body said applicants for these homes would wait about a year longer than those requesting a flat in rural areas, which had helped push up the latest figure.

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The waiting time has been declining after hitting 6.1 years in March 2022, the second-longest period after the 6.6 years reached in 1998. The figure announced on Thursday was the same as the one for September last year.

A source said the completion of 5,000 new flats slated to be allocated in the third quarter had also been delayed as the contractor, Aggressive Construction Company, had suspended all site works involving cranes after one collapsed in September last year. The incident killed three workers and injured another six.

The authority also warned that the waiting time could further increase in future, but the situation was under control.

It said public housing supply would increase starting from 2024-25, and the government would also build 30,000 temporary flats in the coming few years.

“It is estimated that the average waiting time will continue to rise in the first half of 2024,” it said.

The authority said the public housing supply would continue to grow, adding: “The current short-term increase in average waiting time is a necessary stage to go through before the trend takes a clear turn [for the better].”

Noting new projects would be completed between next year and 2026, including those in rural areas in Tuen Mun, north Kwu Tung and Sheung Shui, the authority said the target of capping the average waiting time at six years remained “unchanged”.

Cleresa Wong Pie-yue, chairwoman of the authority’s subsidised housing committee, said estimating future waiting times was difficult but she believed any increases would be minor as supply would pick up again.

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“In the end, there will be more new flats starting from the latter half of 2024 and the supply will further increase starting from 2025,” Wong said. “I remain optimistic that the government will keep its pledge.”

The government has identified sufficient land for building 410,000 public flats in the coming decade, about 100,000 more than the estimated demand. But only two-thirds of the flats will be completed between 2029-30 and 2033-34.

In his maiden policy address in 2022, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu introduced the “light public housing” scheme, which offered 30,000 government-built temporary homes to families who had waited for three or more years to move into a standard public rental flat.

The first batch is expected to be ready by 2025 and the rest will be completed in stages by 2027-28.

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Authorities hope the flats will cut the “composite wait time”, which covers the duration spent waiting for a temporary and a public home, to 4.5 years by 2026-27.

The latest data also showed the average waiting time for individual elderly applicants had remained at 3.9 years for five quarters.

The authority said 3,500 general applicants were allocated a flat during the third quarter, including 940 elderly one-person households.

As of September, the city was processing about 132,000 general requests, as well as 96,600 from individuals aged below 58 at the time of applying.