Page 6 - LH_Research_Report_2020_Eng

Part II: Public Housing Supply

8. The supply of public housing continued to fall short of the Long Term Housing Strategy (LTHS) target. For the next four years
(2020/21–2023/24), public housing supply is forecasted at 20,400 units on average per annum. This will miss the supply target
of 30,100 units per year, as laid down in the 2019 LTHS, by a significant 32%.
9. In the past seven years, public housing supply has never met its targets in any given year. The cumulative deficit amounts to a
total of 82,600 units, which is equivalent to the size of 11.2 Choi Hung Estates. Over the next decade (2020/21–2029/30), we
expect an additional shortfall of at least 66,000 public housing units. We also estimate that the average waiting time for public
rental housing will surpass the six-year mark very soon.
10. In the past five years, delays in public housing completion have been common. We found that about 73% of such delays
occurred on rezoned sites, yet in the near future, the majority of scheduled public housing units (61%) will come from rezoning.
Therefore, we expect to see more potential delays in public housing completion.
11. Rezoning progress has slowed down significantly. Since 2013, the Government has identified a total of 216 sites with rezoning
potential primarily for public housing uses. However, as of January 2020, only 132 sites had been successfully rezoned,
with only three out of those cases competed in 2019. To this date, the rezoning process for 64 sites is still awaiting to be
commenced.

12. To add to the complexity of the problem, the rezoned sites would still be faced with different hurdles in the spade-readying
process. In this report, we scrutinise three of such cases, located respectively in Ma Tau Kok, Fanling, and Yau Tong. These
cases illustrate how housing projects may not proceed smoothly beyond the stage of rezoning due to delays in subsequent
procedures, including facility and land clearance, land resumption, and engineering studies. In Ma Tau Kok’s case, the public
housing plan was even replaced with a transitional housing plan of a smaller scale due to difficulties in relocating existing
facilities.
13. The Government should improve its transparency in disclosing information about public housing projects. It is only with higher
disclosure standards that accountability and the commitment to adhering to predetermined timelines can be improved.
Compared with the practice in the private housing sector, the disclosure of public housing development progress is less than
adequate. We advocate that the Government creates a one-stop disclosure platform to publicly reveal the progress of individual
public housing projects, including the relevant land development process, submission of building plan, commencement of
construction, and completion dates of construction.

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