Last year, HKHA rolled out a series of effective new measures, including requiring all PRH tenants to make declarations on their occupancy status and domestic property ownership in Hong Kong every two years since admission to public housing. The frontline staff of housing estates under the Housing Department (HD) and its central dedicated team (namely the Public Housing Resources Management Sub-section (PHRM)) have been making strenuous efforts to strengthen investigations into suspected PRH tenancy abuse cases and proactively liaising with other government departments. Examples include working with the Land Registry to carry out data comparison and verification, investigating tenants’ property ownership in the Mainland in collaboration with the Mainland authorities through obtaining key information, and encouraging property services agents to allocate resources for detection of tenancy abuse.

Over the past two years, our colleagues have made assiduous efforts to identify PRH units involved in tenancy abuse. In 2022-23 and 2023-24, a total of 5,000 units were recovered due to tenancy abuse and breach of tenancy agreements or housing policies, equivalent to the number of units in a medium-sized estate. Compared with the previous years, the number has more than doubled, clearly reflecting the team’s determination and concerted effort to combat tenancy abuse. Upon successful recovery of a PRH unit, HD can promptly allocate the unit to a PRH applicant. As many of the PRH applicants are currently living in sub-divided units, their living environment can be improved if they are allocated a PRH unit.

With the aid of technology and despite limited resources, PHRM managed to complete in March 2024 the searches of property ownership for the 88,000 households required to make declarations in October 2023. Among them, about 400 households were verified to own domestic properties in Hong Kong. HD has gradually carried out tenancy enforcement and prosecution actions against those making false statements. At present, the team is conducting searches of property ownership in batches for those 250,000 households required to make declarations in April 2024, and carefully reviewing each property / land ownership for necessary follow-up actions, which are even more challenging. These measures not only create a deterrent effect but also demonstrate the determination of HKHA and HD colleagues to combat tenancy abuse.

With the implementation of the new measure on making declarations, the workload of the Cautioned Statement Team under PHRM has surged, and colleagues of the team have worked overtime on their own initiative, for meeting with households on weekday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, for instance. The team members, despite having less time for rest and family life, have derived a great sense of satisfaction from carrying through such a meaningful task. For 2023 as a whole, PRH tenants in about 180 cases were prosecuted and convicted for violating the Housing Ordinance. In 2024 (as of July), PRH tenants in over 300 cases were prosecuted and convicted. HKHA expects that the new measure can enhance the deterrent effect and facilitate the recovery of more PRH units involved in tenancy abuse.

There is a strong consensus in the community that the Government should proactively combat PRH tenancy abuse. HD colleagues are fully aware of the great responsibility on their shoulders. Despite manpower shortage, they have gone the extra mile by striving to flexibly allocate their existing manpower and resources, and have left no stone unturned in identifying suspected PRH abuse cases, with targets exceeded in this respect, which has fully demonstrated the strong team spirit of HD colleagues. Senior Housing Manager (Public Housing Resources Management), Mr Choy Kwan-wing, received The Ombudman’s Award 2024 for Officers of Public Organisations. Mr Choy was commended by the Office of The Ombudsman, Hong Kong for being open-minded, sincere and pragmatic in listening to public views and handling all cases of reports and investigations in a fair and impartial manner to ensure proper allocation of public housing resources to those with pressing needs. Committed to serving the community, HD colleagues will continue to actively explore new measures, such as the application of information technology to detect tenancy abuse, in order to rigorously combat the problem on all fronts and ensure effective use of public housing resources.