Firstly, residents who have not lived in public housing for a full 10 years are required to declare their living conditions every two years, as well as disclose whether they own residential properties in Hong Kong. This initiative initially involves around 88,000 public housing units.

As of the 26th, the Housing Department has received declarations from nearly 75,000 households. Authorities have urged tenants to submit their declarations by the end of this month, and those intentionally refusing or found guilty of misusing public housing will face termination of their leases.

Secondly, the Housing Department has conducted searches for 25,000 authorized households and discovered that 59 of them have members who own residential properties in Hong Kong. After investigations, four cases were confirmed not to involve misuse.

Simultaneously, the Housing Authority received reports alleging that a public housing tenant owned properties and shops in the Mainland. The authorities wrote to Mainland provincial and municipal agencies to investigate, confirming cases of false reporting. The public housing unit was ultimately repossessed on October 31st this year.

Statistics show that the Housing Department has repossessed approximately 2,000 units in breach of regulations in the 2022/23 fiscal year.

Furthermore, to enhance the surveillance of public housing misuse, the Housing Department has reinforced monitoring on online platforms such as Carousell, Airbnb, Xiaohongshu, etc., to combat such activities.

To further strengthen the reporting system, a new measure has been proposed by Secretary for Housing, Rosanna Law, which involves providing incentives for citizens reporting misuse. This may include certificates of commendation or monetary rewards as encouragement and recognition, modeled after the good citizen award system.

In Hong Kong, the misuse of public housing not only results in unit repossession but also fines and potential imprisonment. In June of this year, the Housing Department publicized two illegal cases related to public housing assets.

Two public housing residents were found to have concealed assets, including properties worth HKD 4.13 million and land worth HKD 1.4 million! These individuals were promptly evicted from public housing, fined HKD 12,000 and HKD 5,000, respectively, and sentenced to three months in jail!