A youth hostel, modified from a disused COVID-19 isolation center in Kai Tak, will be in use within 2025, with a public tender for the hostel to begin by the end of this year, the Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak Mei-kuen said on Monday.
The plan, which Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu revealed in his Policy Address last Wednesday, aims to turn the center into a hostel that offers space for cultural and artistic exchanges.
During a news conference on Monday, Mak said the special administrative region government is aware that some groups find it difficult to invite youngsters to the city on exchange programs because of a lack of hostel places. So, the government hopes to make full use of the isolation facility in Kai Tak to provide hostel places for youngsters from outside the city.
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She added that transforming the facility into a youth development facility will see the establishment of a youth hostel and spaces for cultural, artistic, and sports exchanges, aiming to facilitate bidirectional exchanges among Chinese mainland, overseas, and local young people, creating an environment that inspires creativity.
The SAR government will select a suitable group to operate this new youth facility through an open tender process by the end of the year, Mak said.
The aim is to have the facility operational within the next year, with authorities currently drafting tender documents in collaboration with policy bureaus and departments, Mak said.
Currently, the city has about 3,000 hostel places for local youngsters. Under the Youth Hostel Scheme, the government offers the city’s non-governmental organizations subsidies to rent suitable hotels and guesthouses for use as youth hostels.
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The government has set up a task force to offer assistance in implementing the program, in a bid to address young people’s aspiration to have their own living space.
The latest Policy Address has also introduced a three-year pilot program to subsidize elderly recipients of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) who reside in designated care homes in Guangdong. These individuals will receive a monthly subsidy of HK$5,000 ($640), with an initial cap of 1,000 recipients.
At the same conference, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han said that 110,000 elderly people are currently receiving CSSA, 5,600 of whom are living in an unsatisfactory environment. With the injection of an additional HK$5,000 under the new plan, they will have a monthly allowance of HK$9,600, sufficient to live in a nursing home in Guangdong, offering them one more residential choice, Sun said.
