China News Service, January 31. According to Hong Kong's "Ta Kung Pao" report, the Hong Kong SAR government has actively combated the abuse of public housing. By the end of last year, it had successfully repossessed about 2,200 units involved in the abuse of public housing. Hong Kong's Director of Housing, Law Shu-pui, said that she would consider launching a real-name reporting scheme for the abuse of public housing.
Recently, the resale case of the Home Ownership Scheme "Clear Water House" has attracted public attention. When meeting the media on the 30th, Law Shu-pei said that the Housing Department is currently following up on several similar cases.
Image source: Hong Kong "Ta Kung Pao"
The SAR government has stepped up efforts to crack down on the abuse of public housing since last year, including optimizing the "rich tenant policy" and "house addition policy." After moving in, public housing tenants must declare whether they own Hong Kong residential properties every two years. If they own Hong Kong residential properties, they need to move Get out of public housing and ensure good use of public housing resources. Luo Shupei said on the 30th that as of December 31 last year, a total of about 2,200 units that abused public housing and violated leases or housing policies had been recovered, which has reached the previous year's figure. She believes that while the crackdown is high-profile, illegal cases may be hidden deeper, and the number of units expected to be recovered throughout the year may not reach the 3,000 units proposed earlier.
In recent years, the Housing Department has adopted new methods to identify cases of abuse of public housing. Starting from the third quarter of last year, a reward system was added to the performance rating of property management companies. So far, a total of 22 cases of abuse have been discovered by property management. Law Shu-pei believes that it has achieved certain results and is considering launching a reporting scheme, with reference to the police's "Good Citizen Award" with a bonus of HK$3,000. Anyone who reports with a real name and provides accurate information, so that the Housing Department can successfully recover the abusive public housing units, will receive a reporting reward.
"The amount (of the bonus) will not be very large, it is just some thoughts. We must be careful to balance and not encourage the so-called whistleblowing culture." Luo Shupei said that the whistleblowing plan will have verification arrangements, including meeting with the whistleblower to confirm that it is not hearsay.
Luo Shupei said that a new round of declaration will be carried out in April, and more than 250,000 tenants will be included in the optimized "rich household policy" and need to apply. Under the new measures, as of the middle of this month, the authorities have recovered about 87,000 asset review declaration forms from tenants who have lived in public housing for less than 10 years. Among them, about 330 households voluntarily surrendered or had their units repossessed due to different reasons.
As for the remaining 350 tenants who have not submitted forms, about 100 households have still not been contacted. Luo Shupei said that they will focus on handling relevant cases, including door-to-door home visits, checking whether they have exit records and hospital hospitalization records, etc.
At the end of last year, the Housing Department randomly selected about 30,000 declaration forms for inspection through Land Registry data comparison and verification mechanisms. The review found that 46 families owned residential properties in Hong Kong, and compared more than 900 declaration forms that had not been submitted at that time. Tenant information confirmed that 24 families own residential properties in Hong Kong. Luo Shupei said that they will follow up on the issuance of a move-out notice or prosecution, and the repossession procedures for relevant cases are in progress.