HKHS: 13 public rental housing tenants surrendered flats voluntarily

The Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) has demanded about 1,900 public rental housing (PRH) tenants to declare their income and assets.

It was found that some of them own residential properties that cost more than HK$10 million, while others own more than 30 pieces of land. 13 of them have already surrendered their PRH on their own initiative.

Poon Yuen-fong, Director of Property Management at HKHS, said in an interview today (Aug. 22) that 99% of the tenants who had been required to declare their income and assets had already submitted the forms, among which about 13 tenants had notified the HKHS that they were willing to surrender their PRH in seven estates, including Wai King Garden in Tsing Yi, Cho Yiu Chuen in Kwai Chung, Yee Ming Estate in Sha Tin, Lok Man Sun Chuen in To Kwa Wan, Lai Tak Tsuen in Tai Hang, Ming Wah Dai Ha in Shau Kei Wan and Sha Tau Kok Chuen in Sha Tau Kok. Four of them declared that they owned residential properties in Hong Kong.

Poon disclosed that some PRH tenants own more than 30 pieces of land, some of which are located in the New Territories. The HKHS needs to investigate and calculate the value of the land to determine whether it exceeds the asset limit.

He pointed out that 20 cars with cross-border license plates were found parked in the parking lots of PRH in the monthly parking spaces earlier. The value of the cars will be included in the asset calculation if they are verified to be tenants under the "Well-off Tenants Policies" (WTP). The HKHS will step up its efforts to pay attention to cars with cross-border plates parked in monthly parking spaces in the future.

There have been 93 cases of recovery of flats due to tenancy abuse at the end of June this year, of which eight are non-occupation of flats, since the implementation of "Well-off Tenants Policies" (WTP) in September 2018.

The HKHS discovered the cases by checking electricity and water meter records and mailboxes.

Poon explained that the number of reports received has increased significantly since the announcement of measures to step up the fight against tenancy abuse last year. There were 209 cases in the first half of this year, nearly 1.5 times more than the 85 cases of last year, of which about 60% were reported on the Internet. The staff of the HKHS also check on social media such as Xiaohongshu, to see if any PRH tenants have rented out their flats.

Related News:

Law Shuk-pui: Govt attaches importance to evidence as to Mr. Ho's PRH-related case

Average waiting time for general applications for PRH drops to 5.5 years