59 public-housing tenants identified as property owners

Stacy Shi

The Housing Authority has identified 59 public rental housing tenants who currently own properties in Hong Kong after conducting real estate searches for 25,000 public rental housing households.

The authority also found four households have gone bankrupt but their property ownership has not been updated.

Director of Housing Rosanna Law Shuk-pui said the authority would not terminate the four bankrupt families' tenancies and investigation is underway on the remaining 55 cases.

To combat public rental housing abuse, the enhanced Well-off Tenants Policies, which took effect last month, requires tenants to declare to the authority every two years after they admit to public rental housing whether they own domestic properties in Hong Kong and whether they continuously live in the units.

The authority has collected 74,851 declaration forms, accounting for 85 percent of the first batch distributed to 88,000 public rental housing units on October 3.

Law called on tenants to hand in the declaration forms by the deadline tomorrow or the authority would terminate the tenancies.

The authority has recovered about 2,200 PRH units in 2022/23, including 800 abused units, 800 involving rent arrears and about 70 tenants becoming ineligible to continue living in PRH units under the well-off tenants policies.

Law expected the number exceed 2,200 this year, as until last Thursday, about 2,000 units have been already been recovered.

She added tenants also need to declare their properties outside Hong Kong, which will be regarded as assets, and they would be required to move out if the assets exceed the PRH application limit.

A Moving Out notice was issued to a household last month after investigation, including contacting mainland organizations, which showed the tenant owns both commercial and residential units in the mainland, Law said.

She said the banking and insurance sectors had provided suggestions on tracking PRH tenants owning overseas properties, but did not disclose details involving law enforcement.

Regarding public rental housing tenants offering rent on online platforms, Law said the authority had earlier conducted undercover operations and required a tenant - who offered rent through online marketplace Carousell - to move out on September 29.

"Our staff will monitor online platforms such as Carousell, Xiaohongshu and house rental platform Airbnb, and we will conduct undercover operations," Law said.

She added that the authority is cooperating with various government departments, including the Immigration Department, the Water Supplies Department and the Land Registry to further combat public housing abuse.

The authority is also considering to encourage the reporting of abuse of public housing by making reference to the Good Citizen Award.