Gov’t consults public on affordable housing law amendment

The Macau government has announced a “parallel solution” that seeks to launch the public consultation for the review of the affordable housing law and partially amend five parts of it. The consultation period started last Saturday and will run until September 19.
The consultation document consists of two parts. The first focuses on the overall direction of the affordable and social housing, while the second is about the partial amendment of the affordable housing law.
In the first part, residents are invited to give opinions on a wide range of questions in relation to the targets and principles of the public housing system, as well as whether the government should reintroduce the point system and remove the minimum income requirement for affordable housing.
As for the second part, the government has listed five areas in the affordable housing law that will be subject to change. The first is related to the drawing of the units. According to the document, the government wants to allocate affordable housing units to all three application groups, namely the core family, non-core family and individuals. This means that all applicants will have the chance to be awarded a unit no matter which group they are in.
Currently, applicants in the core family group take priority over people in the other two groups. In the previous round of affordable housing, there were not even enough units to satisfy the demand of the core family group, which means that applicants from the other two groups had no chance of getting a unit.
Moreover, the proposed amendment will allow families with three or more members to only buy affordable housing units that have two or more bedrooms. This, the document said, is to prevent the scenario where a family of five had to apply for a one-bedroom unit, which it said was a mismatch of resources.
In addition, the government wants to change a section of the law so that during the drawing process to select applicants, the authorities need only conduct a preliminary evaluation on all applications, as well as verify the qualifications of the applicants and the authenticity of the documents submitted. This way, it will take less time for the Housing Bureau to process the applications.
The remaining two amendments require applicants to stay in MSAR for more than 183 days of the year before the day the application was launched, as well as allowing partial owners of a property to apply for affordable housing apartments.
After the current consultation period is finished, the government will prepare for a review of the public housing system at the end of this year.
However, it did not provide a timeframe regarding the affordable housing law amendment, only claiming that a draft would be sent to the Executive Council and the Legislative Assembly after the current consultation ends. JPL