Mainland properties of HK public housing tenants must be checked, says Ombudsman

The Housing Authority and Housing Society should check with the mainland over public housing tenants’ property ownership while enhancing penalties for abusing public housing flats, said the Ombudsman on Wednesday.

This came after the government watchdog finished a probe regarding authorities’ work combating the abuse of public housing flats and made 31 suggestions.

Ombudsman Jack Chan Jick-chi called on both agencies to undergo a comprehensive review to ensure the flats are rightly used.

He cited that over 7,000 abused public housing flats have been reclaimed since July  2022, but the maximum penalty for those abusing public housing flats has been termination of rental contract, while the prosecution rate stands at only at 4.2 percent in the past seven years.

In most cases, despite having adequate evidence, authorities have failed to launch prosecutions as it has already exceeded the two-year prosecution deadline, Chan added.

“The authorities should conduct a comprehensive review on how to launch prosecution within the deadline, to raise the prosecution and conviction rates,” he said.

Citing one case of a tenant who lives overseas and illegally rented the flat to others, but it took the authorities five months to reclaim the flat.

“The penalty [of terminating the contract] had posed limited consequences to the tenant who lives abroad,” Chan said.

But he explained the Housing Society was not empowered to launch a prosecution, as it could only terminate the rental contract in case of serious violations.

The Ombudsman also called on the authorities to establish communication channels with mainland and Macau authorities, in order to understand tenants’ property ownership outside Hong Kong.

The watchdog also found that, despite the Housing Society having amended its policies against well-off tenants in September 2018, only 4,160 new tenants were public housing flat tenants, accounting for 14.1 percent of the total tenants as of November last year.

This showed that the NGO was still unable to understand the financial situation of most of its public housing flat tenants, Chan said, as he suggested it conduct an in-depth study on expanding the well-off tenant policy to all its tenants.

Both the Housing Authority and Housing Society welcomed the Ombudsman investigation report. 
A Housing Department spokesman said the administration will continue to explore new measures to combat abuse of public housing flats.

“We are also actively exploring amendments to the Housing Ordinance to criminalize the act of serious tenancy abuse, targeting to have the bills passed in the Legislative Council in mid-2025,” the department spokesman said.

The Housing Society said it will launch a Report Public Housing Abuse Award in April – following a similar policy launched by the authority last Wednesday (jan 15) – to encourage citizens to provide information of suspected cases of public housing abuse.

(Eunice Lam)