Hong Kong urged to boost public housing space and speed up flat allocation

Hong Kong authorities should set targets in the city’s first five-year development plan to increase the average living space for public housing tenants and raise the minimum size of subsidised sale flats as supply grows, a concern group has urged.The Federation of public housing Estates also said on Thursday that the government should make clear it aims to reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to three years in the long run, rather than setting a time frame as a key performance indicator (KPI) in the five-year plan, as it might take more time to achieve.As of end-March, the average waiting time for a public rental flat for general applicants – including families and one-person elderly households – was 5.6 years, which falls to 4.7 years after factoring in allocations of temporary housing under the Light public housing scheme.