Housing Bureau to loosen social housing income limits

Aiming to counter the increasing inflation that particularly affects low-income residents, the Housing Bureau plans to review the social housing scheme. To be discussed in a 60-day public consultation which will begin on Thursday, a draft revision of the scheme was released yesterday which suggests lowering the threshold for elderly applicants as well as liberalising restrictions for applicants who have previously benefited from housing subsidy schemes.
The bureau’s president, Ieong Kam Wa, informed media during a press conference that the current social housing scheme has been implemented for five years and thus requires revision as soon as possible to keep up with the pace of economic development.
According to the revision, the personal net worth ceiling established to apply for the social housing might be doubled for elderly applicants who have reached the age of 65. Meanwhile, the bureau intends to raise the minimum age limit for people competing for public housing allocation.
“About twenty percent of the individual applicants to social housing in 2013 [the last round of applications] were between 18 and 24 years old and most of them were students. But are they really facing an urgent housing problem?” indicated the bureau’s research department head, Iam Lei Leng, adding that the government will decide whether or not to raise the minimum age limit from 18 to 25 or 29 years old depending on the public consultation results.
Designated as a safety net for society’s less-privileged groups, the social housing scheme – mostly offering one-bedroom apartments – allows a household to rent a flat with as little as 6 percent of its monthly income. Currently, the scheme accommodates nearly 11,000 tenants with over 66 percent of them paying an average rent below MOP200 and 27 percent paying below MOP800.
On the other hand, a total of 910 households living in the social housing complexes earn a monthly income that exceeded the upper limit, with 50 of them exceeding double the amount.
“The upper limit of income stipulated in the current law is MOP9,340 for any one-number household; doubling the amount is MOP18,680, which has exceeded the median income of local residents at MOP16,000, meaning that the tenant has exceeded the actual living standard of average Macau residents,” explained the bureau in the consultation document, adding that it has decided to distinguish these tenants as “well-off households” and will implement a mandatory but gradual exit for them.
While the government plans to increase its current charge for “well-off households” from 22 percent of their income to 30 percent, it also suggested doubling the rent for families that earn a stable income that exceeds the limit in order to push them to exit the scheme voluntarily.
In addition, Ieong Kam Wa revealed that there are currently 1,000 vacant social housing units to be allocated.  Moreover, 2,777 units are still being built while 1,400 more are planned for the long term.
As for residents who are neither benefitting from the social housing scheme nor are able to apply to buy an affordable housing unit, Ieong stressed that the Housing Bureau is studying a policy to offer new types of public housing and expects to propose a scheme within this year.