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way the increase in private rents over time has provided perverse rationale
for the smaller size of PRH units, since their rents have become lower
relative to rents in the private sector.

A means-test and a double-rent policy was eventually introduced
for those who were not squatters and well-off tenants ten years after they
were admitted into the programme. This has had only a limited impact on
recovering units from existing tenants although it has made tenants who
did wish to be means-tested to pay higher rents.

3.3 Ineffective Flat Recovery

The HOS has been used to recover public housing units from well-
off tenants alongside the use of means-testing and a double-rent policy.
Progress has been painfully slow and is not very effective (see Table 7). This
is to be expected, as administrative measures have limited effects unless
they are draconian, but this is unlikely to be the approach adopted when
the objective is not to drive out tenants but to entice them to leave with an
HOS unit.

Table 7. PRH flat recovery by the Housing Authority, by reason

Source: Government press release.

In summary, because of allocation decisions made in the past,
many households in the public housing sector are well-off, but many
households in the private sector are not. Well-off tenants consider the
units they occupy to be too small given their income. Even though many
well-off public tenants live in units that are too small for their needs, many
poor households living in the private sector have no access to these same
units, which would be more suitable for their case. Without a market, the
re-matching of tenants and housing units cannot take place legitimately. If
the status quo is kept, the malign forces of our inequitable housing regime
will continue to foster social contentions for years to come.

Nonetheless, inequity is but one of the many issues related to the
current system. Another equally ferocious issue arising from the public
housing programme: divorce and family breakdown.

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