New Hong Kong housing director against ‘rashly’ raising minimum age to 65 for exempting public flat tenants from having to declare assets

“On the allocation of resources, society adopts a relatively lenient attitude towards the elderly. If we rashly tighten the arrangement, it may provoke repercussions, saying that we ignore the needs and welfare of the elderly,” Law said on Monday.

She noted that some elderly tenants would need to move out of their public flats if the policy was tightened but they might not have a regular income to support themselves.

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Public flats currently house around 190,000 households in which all members are aged 60 or above, accounting for about a quarter of all tenants. These elderly residents are exempted from making regular declarations under Housing Authority “Well-off Tenants Policies”.

Under the rules, tenants living in public rental flats for 10 years are required to declare their income and assets every two years, with households exceeding the threshold being required to pay more in rent and rates.

Tenants whose income is five times higher than the limit or who own assets that are 100 times greater than the permitted amount, or who own property in the city, must vacate their flats.

Law said the government had reclaimed more than 2,200 flats in 2022-23 from tenants who abused public housing resources or contravened leasing terms, 70 per cent higher than the annual average recorded between 2018-19 and 2021-22.

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Law also said the Housing Department set up a mechanism with the Land Registry in June to check whether public housing tenants owned a residential property.

Cleresa Wong Pie-yue, chairwoman of the authority’s Subsidised Housing Committee, proposed raising the minimum age last month.

She said the existing age threshold would have a huge impact on public housing turnover as the city’s population aged quickly, adding the change would be in line with the government’s principle of rationally distributing public housing resources.