Five-Year Plan: Chief Exec. John Lee says wait for subsidised rental flats will fall to under 4 years by 2030

The average waiting time for subsidised rental housing will be reduced to under four years by 2030 as Hong Kong boosts its housing supply, leader John Lee has announced as part of the city’s first Five-Year Plan.

Delivering the half-decade policy blueprint on Wednesday morning, the chief executive said that the city will “substantially increase public housing supply” in the run-up to 2030 through short and long-term measures.

“With the persistent increase in the total public housing production, the Composite Waiting Time for Subsidised Rental Housing will reduce to 4.5 years in 2026-27, and is expected to further reduce to less than four years in 2030-31,” the policy document reads.

The Composite Waiting Time for Subsidised Rental Housing is the average time that applicants wait before they are housed in a public rental flat or a short-term Light Public Housing unit — temporary apartments that applicants can move into while they wait to be allocated a conventional subsidised rental flat.

Larger homes

Lee also said that the government will offer larger homes over the next decade, including units in the Northern Metropolis.

Proposed in 2021, the Northern Metropolis is a sprawling infrastructure project set to transform 30,000 hectares land near the city’s rural border with mainland China. The tech hub promises to provide jobs, more homes, and deeper integration with neighbouring Shenzhen. However, critics have voiced concern over the HK$224 billion project’s scale and ambition, its impact on sensitive wetland habitats, and the loss of existing homes and farmland.

The floor area of public housing units due to be completed will be “progressively enhanced,” while the proportion of larger units in new builds will also be increased, according to Lee’s plan.

In his annual Policy Address, delivered after the Five-Year Plan, Lee stated that a quarter of subsidised sale flats completed from 2031/32 onwards will have an area of 45 square metres or more – up from the current 20 per cent.

“The public can enjoy more spacious housing, raising their overall living quality,” the document reads.

Over the next decade, 40 per cent of the city’s new homes will be public rental housing units, while subsidised sale units will make up 30 per cent. The remaining 30 per cent will be private residential properties, according to the plan.

Lee also said that the government would press ahead with the Basic Housing Unit regulatory regime, which is meant to ensure that residential buildings comply with minimum standards of living conditions before they can be legally let out.

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James Lee is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in culture and social issues. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Journalism from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he witnessed the institution’s transformation over the course of the 2019 extradition bill protests and after the passing of the Beijing-imposed security law.

Since joining HKFP in 2023, he has covered local politics, the city’s housing crisis, as well as landmark court cases including the 47 democrats national security trial. He was previously a reporter at The Standard where he interviewed pro-establishment heavyweights and extensively covered the Covid-19 pandemic and Hong Kong’s political overhauls under the national security law.