The Housing Bureau today released the latest Composite Waiting Time for Subsidised Rental Housing (CWT).

As at end-September this year, the CWT for general applicants that were housed in public rental housing (PRH) or Light Public Housing (LPH) in the past 12 months has been maintained at 5.1 years, again the lowest record since the first quarter of 2018.

Compared with the highest level of 6.1 years before the current-term Government took office, the CWT has been shortened by a full year.

General applicants include family and elderly one-person applicants.

The bureau said that in the third quarter of 2025, it successfully arranged for a total of about 7,900 general applicants to be housed to PRH or LPH, including about 1,600 newly completed PRH units, 4,000 recovered PRH flats and 2,300 LPH units.

Among the general applicants settled in PRH, over 85% were housed to urban or extended urban districts. However, the waiting time for these districts is about two years longer than that for the New Territories, and this has been taken into account in the latest CWT.

Hence, the bureau explained, despite the huge housing supply of around 8,000 units this quarter, the CWT stayed at 5.1 years as in the last quarter.

On the other hand, since the first LPH project began allocations in the first quarter of 2025, the waiting time of general applicants who were housed to LPH is only 3.1 years on average. This fully highlights the key role LPH plays in shortening the waiting time for PRH.

The bureau said it anticipated that about 9,500 LPH units will be gradually completed for intake in 2025, moving towards the target of completing the construction of about 30,000 LPH units by 2027-28.

Additionally, as at end-September 2025, there were about 111,600 general applications for PRH, while the non-elderly one-person category under the Quota & Points System recorded about 85,700 applications.

Compared with the highest level of 156,400 cases and 143,700 cases of general applications and non-elderly one-person applications, there is a reduction by around 30% and 40% respectively, clearly demonstrating that the PRH waiting queue is being reduced.

The target of reducing the CWT to 4.5 years by 2026-27 remains unchanged, the bureau added.