HONG KONG – The Subsidised Housing Committee of the Hong Kong Housing Authority on Friday endorsed increasing the rent for public rental housing by 10 percent and a three-month grace period for PRH tenants except those considered well-off.

The rent will be adjusted upwards with effect from Oct 1, the Housing Authority said in a statement. PRH tenants will be notified in writing one month before the implementation date of the new rent.

“The increase is about HK$230 per PRH household per month on average, and the range of adjustment is from HK$49 to HK$572," a spokesman for the Housing Authority said.

The hike came after the Housing Authority found in its 2024 PRH rent review, conducted every two years, that the income index in 2023, the second period of the review, was higher than that of 2021, the first period, by 10.73 percent, according to the government.

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Having considered the prevailing socio-economic circumstances, the extent of the rent hike, the impact on the PRH tenants and the HA's financial position, the Subsidised Housing Committee decided to provide a one-off special concessionary measure to PRH tenants by waiving the extra rent, allowing them to continue paying the current rents until January next year.

"Excluding Comprehensive Social Security Assistance households, about 60 percent of the tenants will have a monthly rent increase of HK$250 or below, and about 2 percent of tenants will have a monthly rent increase of HK$100 or below," the spokesman said.

“We believe that most of the PRH tenants should be able to afford the rent increase.”

According to the Housing Authority, the income of PRH households has increased cumulatively by 131 percent from 2007 to 2023, while PRH rent will have only increased by 87 percent cumulatively during the same period.

As of March this year, there were some 807,800 public housing tenants in the special administrative region. Rentals range from HK$490 to HK$5,723, with an average monthly rent of HK$2,297.

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The HKSAR government had raised public housing rents by 10 percent, the maximum rate allowed under the government’s PRH rent adjustment mechanism, in 2014, 2016, and 2018, without exemptions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2022, public housing saw rent increases of 9.66 percent and 1.17 percent, respectively, and the authorities provided varying degrees of exemption for residents.