The community's mainstream opinion agrees with the Housing Department's approach to tighten up singles' applications for public housing, Deputy Director of Housing Tam Wing-pong says.

Speaking on a radio talk show today, Mr Tam said the public is concerned about whether the department has sufficient resources to meet all the single applicants' needs, and whether it is appropriate for certain young applicants to receive housing subsidies.

He said there are more than 90,000 applicants on the list - 40% of them singles - while more than 10,000 are below 35 years old. The number of young applicants are goriwng at 4% each year.

Mr Tam said there has been a surge in the number of single applications, and many of them have a higher education and should be able to improve their living standards on their own.

The community should consider whether it is appropriate to continue to offer public housing to this group of young singles, he said.

Four proposals under consideration

The Housing Department has drawn up four proposals to tackle the problem:

* to reject all non-elderly singles of public housing/HOS residents' applications;

* to set an age limit for applicants;

* to set a quota on non-elderly singles applications; and

* to add a point system to the quota proposal.

Mr Tam said adopting the first proposal would not reduce the number of private housing single applications, while it is difficult to set an age limit objectively for the second proposal.

Two months' further consultation required

He said the quota proposal may not cater to the needs of the relatively senior singletons while the quota plus point system proposal is more suitable. A simple point system is preferred.

Mr Tam stressed the proposals are not targetting a certain group of applicants, and the question of bias will be taken into account in policy formulation.

He added more views will be collated in the coming two months before a final decision is made.