Allocation of Public Rental Flats to Approved Applicants

Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis asked the Minister for National Development (a) whether the Ministry can provide the current outstanding number of public rental flat applications which are approved but have yet to be allocated a flat; and (b) what is HDB's process for the prioritisation and allocation of available rental flats to approved applicants and the weightage of various factors that are considered.

Approved public rental applicants will be invited to select a flat in chronological order, that is, from the earliest to the most recently approved. Each applicant will be invited up to three times to select a flat. Those who do not select a flat after being invited twice will be deprioritised, to give other applicants the chance to select a flat first. Upon appeal, priority may be granted to applicants who are in urgent need of housing, such as those with medical grounds or other exceptional circumstances.

There are about 1,000 approved applicants who have not selected their public rental flats. Forty percent of them had been invited to select a flat previously but did not do so. The average waiting time for approved applicants to be invited to select a flat has come down over the past year to about six months currently.