Lawmaker says no to higher age threshold for gov’t housing applicants

Lawmaker and New Macau Association member, Sulu Sou, submitted three recommendations to the Chief Executive yesterday regarding the proposed amendments to the Economic Housing Law. The amendments, which are currently under detailed discussion by the concerned Legislative Assembly Committee, include a controversial measure that would raise the minimum age of applicants.
In the draft amendments, the government has proposed to raise the age limit of an applicant from 18 years old to 25 years old. After stirring up objections across society, the government later changed the proposed minimum to 23 years old.
This proposed age minimum only concerns individual applicants. For applications made as a family unit, the age floor, which only applies to the lead of the unit, has no change proposed and will likely remain at 18 years of age.
Sou has been taking an opposing stand on this particular amendment. He thinks it will entail unfair treatment of different people. He also pointed out that in the public consultation process for the law amendment, he did not see any such recommendations made public, either by the general public or the government.
Even though the housing needs of younger residents have been relatively weak, they should not be deprived of the right to apply for the government’s subsidized housing, Sou claims.
Regarding some residents’ worries that these younger people may strengthen competition between applications, the lawmaker pointed out that this would be very unlikely. He cited the figure from previous applications, which shows that only five out of 10,000 young applicants of ages between 18 and 24 have won a chance to purchase a subsidized housing apartment.
The lawmaker also worries about potential social division caused by the government’s proposal on the change of the minimum age.
In his second recommendation, the lawmaker encourages the government to restrict the number of permanent residents within a family unit to not lower than 50% of members of an applying family unit.
Sou cited the case in neighboring Hong Kong, in which applicants must not only be permanent Hong Kong residents, they must also regularly reside in the territory. He thinks it is a good step to protect the rights to housing of local permanent residents.
Currently, the government only proposes to make the proportion of permanent residents in a family unit as a scoring criterion for applications submitted as a family unit.
His last recommendation concerns the continuation of the queuing system. Applications submitted before 2011 will remain active for future housing draws.
Sou thinks the continuation of a queue system gives residents greater hope and better opportunity for life planning.