Over half of one-person public housing applicants have university background

Over half of some 38,600 one-person public housing applicants in 2022 were university graduates aged under 30, according to data released by Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin on Wednesday. 

Her reply came as she responded to inquiries by lawmaker Chow Man-kong on the number of young applicants for public rental housing units in the Legislative Council meeting on Wednesday. 

Ho said the Housing Department doesn’t have statistics on the figures under the category of “non-elderly one-person applicants aged 35 or below”. Yet, she cited a 2022 survey and noted that there were 38,600 one-person applicants under the Quota and Points System (QPS) aged below 30. 

Among them, 52 percent have attended tertiary education or above and 24 percent have received post-secondary education. 

She continued that given the limited public housing resources, it is a policy of the Housing Authority to accord priority to family applicants and elderly one-person applicants in the allocation of public rental housing flats. 

She added that for applicants under the QPS, the priority of flat allocation is different from that of general family and elderly applicants and is determined by the total points accumulated by the applicants under the points system instead of the time when they joined the queue. 

The average waiting time of general applicants is therefore not applicable to applicants under QPS. 

“Generally speaking, older applicants will be allocated flats faster under QPS in order not to encourage early registration by young people, and to motivate them to work hard in their youth to move up the social ladder,” Ho said. 

“The average age of non-elderly one-person applicants who were housed to public rental housing in the past five years is 57, whereas the age of the youngest applicant who was housed to PRH ranges from 47 to 52.” 

The housing chief pointed out that as of the end of March, the number of public rental housing units for one to two persons under the Housing Authority stood at 109,400, with Kwun Tong providing some 22,200 followed by Kwai Tsing at 13,000.