The housing chief advised against setting a benchmark rent for subdivided flats on Monday, citing concerns of a fall in supply, as the special administrative region government is poised to bring in regulations to phase out poor quality subdivided flats.

Speaking at a Legislative Council panel on housing, the Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin said if a starting rent is set for the “basic housing unit” – a name given to subdivided flats that meet the government’s criteria for the rental market, it could curtail supply.

Ho cited the example of setting a benchmark rent of around HK$2,000 – which is similar to that of public housing flats. In that case, landlords may prefer to lease an entire flat directly instead of renting out separate rooms, which could lead to a decline in the supply of basic housing units, Ho told the panel.

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The latest Policy Address, unveiled in October, proposed regulating Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, requiring them to meet requirements such as a floor area of at least eight square meters, separate toilet, ventilation. The government will begin a two-month public consultation in December and said it hopes to pass a bill for the renting of subdivided units within 2025. It will start registration of the units in the fourth quarter of 2025 at the soonest.

Ho said that according to the research, only 10 percent of current subdivided units require major reconstruction to meet the requirement of having a window, while more than 90 percent of subdivided units are equipped with windows already.

Currently, the city has 110,000 households living in subdivided flats. Forty percent of them are not on the waiting list for public rental flats.

Ho said the authority aims to increase the total public housing supply, and will promote digitalization in related construction and management. She said the government has identified sufficient land to meet the public housing supply target of 308,000 units in the next 10 years.

Coupled with Light Public Housing, the total public housing supply in the next five years can reach 189,000 units, which is 80 percent higher than that of the first five-year period when the current-term government took office.  

Ho said that the first batch of 2,100 LPH units, located on Yau Pok Road, Yuen Long, should be completed for intake in the first quarter of 2025. As of the end of October, the government had received 11,700 applications for the 4,400 units provided in the first phase.

It is estimated that the composite waiting time for public rental housing can be shortened to 4.5 years with the gradual completion of LPH, Ho said.

LPH is a large-scale social project adopting a simple, standardized design and a Modular Integrated Construction approach, that aims to fill the gap of public housing supply in the short term and improve residents’ living conditions.

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Ho said that the use of second generation MiC will provide a wider application to simplify on-site installation procedures and enhance site safety.

Other than that, 3D digital maps, virtual digital models will be used into new public housing projects from 2025.

Moreover, the Housing Authority has selected 10 public rental housing estates as pilot sites for smart estate management by adopting innovative technologies such as the internet of things sensors, artificial intelligence and mobile devices to help daily estate management. A centralized estate management platform will be established from 2025.

Contact the writer at atlasshao@chinadailyhk.com