The housing minister on Saturday said officials will ask 40 households to move out of public housing after authorities discovered that they own private residential property.

About 88,000 public housing tenants were asked to declare their residential situation, and officials have so far received a response from 98 percent of them.

Of the 1,700 households that did not respond, Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho said about 200 of them voluntarily returned their housing units.

She also told a Commercial Radio programme that officials had conducted checks on 25,000 households and found that nearly 60 owned private property.

"Among them are forty households that owned residential property and we will issue them a notice to vacate. For the remaining cases, they involve different situations, such as undergoing divorce procedures, and filing for bankruptcy... We will follow up on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Earlier, the government said it had decided to scrap the Lin Tong Mei project in Sheung Shui in its second phase to build temporary homes. Instead, officials said the government plans to convert five vacant or soon-to-be-emptied schools into housing units, coupled with an additional development in Ma On Shan.

Ho pointed out that four of the five schools earmarked for light public housing projects were still in use.

"If schools could assist, we might go to the campus to do some planning first or conduct preliminary surveying. That would not interrupt classes. It would also be possible for staff from the Architectural Services Department to visit after school hours...or during holidays. These things could be done in parallel," she said.

The minister added that she hoped all light public housing projects could be completed by 2027.