Govt looks to developers to boost subsidised housing
Housing Secretary Winnie Ho announced Tuesday a pilot scheme to speed up subsidised housing supply by tapping into market forces. The scheme involves inviting private developers to build flats on government sites and also attracting them to rezone their own land banks for building subsidised flats. All flats under the scheme would be sold at a 35 percent discount to the market price. Ho said the government will start accepting tenders for two plots of public land under the scheme by early next year, which aim to provide 1,600 subsidised homes in Tung Chung and 700 in Chai Wan. The announcement of an additional plot of land will be made at a later date. "In our projection, there should be a shortening of two to 10 months for these projects," she said, adding that the government's way of doing site formation work takes more time than the private sector. "We want to leverage the flexibility of the developers in the private market, so we leave it to private developers to do the site formation," she added. Ho said developers are also being encouraged to rezone their own plots of land to help boost subsidised housing supply, with the land premium for doing so under the scheme reduced to one-third of market value for the residential portion. She said the government will approve minor changes to eligibility criteria made by developers to help specific groups such as young families and the elderly, in addition to the Home Ownership Scheme requirements, on a case-by-case basis. But Ho said she did not expect the scheme to affect the public-private housing ratio of 70:30. "If the private developer, they have their own land and they make use of the land to join the programme, that will add a little bit more to the 70 percent ratio," she said. "But .. for the time being, we do not see a very, very substantial impact because you can understand that we are talking about a large quantity of the total volume of public land," she added. The housing minister said to ensure quality, the administration will not buy back any unsold flats, and developers must hire independent surveyors to conduct final inspections.