Ombudsman urges housing body to inform applicants that process can exceed three years
LAI YING-KITyingkit.lai@scmp.com
PUBLISHED : Friday, 11 December, 2015, 12:01am
UPDATED : Friday, 11 December, 2015, 12:01am
Ombudsman Connie Lau Yin-hing. Photo: SCMP Pictures
The city's watchdog handling complaints against government agencies has urged the Housing Department to inform public housing applicants that the average waiting time for non-priority groups can often exceed three years.
In two cases, applicants had not been allocated a flat even after waiting seven years, according to a report released yesterday by the Office of the Ombudsman.
It said the three-year average included priority applicants, such as the elderly, who usually only had to wait one to two years. But it failed to reflect the longer waiting times for families.
The Ombudsman investigated after receiving 110 complaints from public housing applicants over the past four years that they had not been allocated a flat after waiting three years - the government's target.
Housing Department records showed that of 20,100 applicants who were allotted a flat in the year ending June last year, 52 per cent, or 10,400, had waited longer than three years.
A total of 5,400, or 27 per cent, had waited more than four years while 7 per cent, or 1,500, had waited more than five years. About 4,500 were single applicants, mostly elderly, who waited 1.7 years on average.
At least 10 families had waited over seven years for flats.
"We consider the Housing Department's calculation to be too generalised and does not reflect the actual situation," Ombudsman senior investigator Sally Chow Pui-man said.
"Such information can easily mislead applicants … and may attract … criticism of creating a false image of housing allocation within three years."
Excluding the single applicants, the watchdog deduced from the Housing Department figures that the average waiting time for families and non-priority applicants for the year ending June 2014 was 3.38 years.
Ombudsman Connie Lau said the department included a breakdown of waiting times for different groups according to their family size and districts in a yearly report to the Housing Authority's public housing committee. She suggested the department could collate the data and release it to applicants.
The Housing Department said yesterday the report was uploaded to its website and that of the authority.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/1889603/hong-kong-watchdog-calls-housing-department-be-clearer-about
