About 5,000 Hong Kong public flats have been taken back over the past two years from “well-off tenants”, including those whose luxury cars exposed their financial situation and 12 others owning properties across the border, authorities have revealed.
Director of Housing Rosanna Law Shuk-pui said on Saturday the number of flats reclaimed was equivalent to those in a medium-sized public estate and cost around HK$5 billion (US$640 million) in construction.
“The crackdown on abuse [of public rental flats] is very meaningful and we will definitely carry on,” Law told a morning radio programme.
She said that while it usually took the government a few years to build a new housing estate, only a few months were needed to renovate a retrieved flat before it could be allocated to a household.
There were also relatively more of those flats located in developed or urban areas, which were popular among tenants.
Authorities stepped up regulations targeting well-off public housing tenants last October after Kwong Kau, 66, the former father-in-law of slain model Abby Choi Tin-fung, was found to have owned a luxury home while buying a subsidised flat.
Under the revised rules, all tenants now have to make income and asset declarations every two years. Previously, only those who had lived there for a decade had to do so.
Law said her colleagues had been actively watching out for the fancy cars found in public estate car parks after news reports had highlighted the situation.
She said she had visited the car park of Queen’s Hill Estate in Fanling and saw a fancy car with both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong licence plates, which only specific businessmen, political elites or philanthropists are eligible to apply for.
Law said that after further investigations, a household in that estate had surrendered their flat to authorities, though she was not certain whether it was the car owner.
Another 12 flats were also repossessed after the tenants were found to be owning properties on the mainland or Macau that were above the authorised asset limit, she added.
Since last September, a scheme which encouraged property management and cleaning companies to report tenants suspected of flat abuse has been in place. Law said 38 flats were taken back under this route.
But a similar plan for individual tenants to report their peers was still under consideration, she said.
Some 250,000 household tenants who have lived in public housing for 10 years or more have completed their income and asset declarations. Among them were 1,800 who proactively returned the flats to authorities following the exercise.
But still some 70 households failed to make their declaration on time, Law said, adding authorities had already issued letters to retrieve the flats.
Law also revealed that authorities were considering a plan to help young people purchase their own housing. She earlier called on young people to not apply for public flats as soon as they could or “lie flat”.
“It is not easy … but can be considered,” she said. “It involves life planning and we need to think clearly.”
