The Housing Bureau (IH) announced Wednesday a list of 12,098 applicants for just 1,544 one-bedroom home-ownership scheme (HOS) flats in Seac Pai Van in Coloane, an oversubscription of about eight times the number on offer.
The bureau said in a statement cited by The Macau Post Daily that it accepted 12,098 applicants from the 15,031 applications it received, amounting to an acceptance rate of 80.5 percent. Of the accepted applicants 2,486 were classified as “core-family”, 259 were classified “non-core family” and 9,353 are singles.
The 1,544 HOS flats are in Ip Heng Building which is part of the huge Seac Pai Van public housing estate, which comprises about 9,000 HOS units and low-rental social housing flats.
According to HOS regulations, all applicants are classified as “core-family”, “non-core family” or individuals.
The “core-family” applicants have priority to choose a flat, “non-core family” applicants come after while the individual applicants are ranked last.
“Core-family” refers to applicants that have other family members such as their spouse, children or parents included in the application while “non-core” refers to applicants that have other family members such as brothers or sisters included in their application.
The bureau also said that of the 9,353 individual applicants only 141 were aged 65 or higher or disabled while the remainder were young people.
Residents and civic leaders have criticised the government for not building enough public housing flats to tackle the city’s housing problem caused by skyrocketing property prices in the private housing sector.
Man residents complain not only about extremely high property prices but also increasingly unaffordable rents.
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Chan Wa Keong, who heads the bureau’s Public Housing Department, told reporters yesterday that about 90 percent of “core-family” applicants have one or two family members and very few have three or four in the family group.
Asked by reporters for his comments on why so many “core-families” applied for one-bedroom flats, Chan said that the applicants made their decision based on their financial situation.(macaunews)
