Labour and welfare minister Chris Sun on Monday said he hopes the community living rooms in To Kwa Wan, Hung Hom and Nam Cheong would open by the end of the summer holidays, as part of efforts to help the newly identified 950,000 people for targeted poverty alleviation.

Speaking at a Legco panel meeting, Sun hoped the three facilities, aimed at providing support for grassroots families, would be able to serve residents in summer after undergoing outfitting works.

Lawmaker Connie Lam asked whether there were plans to expand the shared-space project to more districts to help more people living in poor conditions.

“Apart from subdivided unit households, people living in cages or caged homes and cubicles also need these kind of community living rooms. There are a lot of such kinds of residential developments in Sha Tin, in Lohas Park in Tseung Kwan O, there are also subdivided units…Will the government expand the programme to other districts?” she asked.

In response, Sun said it’s not easy for the government to identify locations for these living rooms.

“Subdivided unit households are concentrated in urban areas and as a result it's difficult for the government to identify a venue to establish a community living room. That is why we have to rely on the business sector to identify such a venue for us,” he said.

At the same meeting, lawmakers also questioned whether a new framework for poverty measurement could reflect the actual poverty situation and target underprivileged groups.

The government identified around 950,000 elderly people, single-parent households and subdivided flat tenants for targeted poverty alleviation. It will no longer use median household income to define poverty.

Welfare sector lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen said officials shouldn’t scrap the poverty line because it can keep the public informed about the impoverished population.

“Of course, the poverty line is contentious elsewhere in the world, but the poverty line works in two ways — we can tell the trend; we can see whether the impoverished population is growing or shrinking. The poverty line can also help us keep an eye on the performance of the government,” he said.

The welfare chief responded by saying the government had been putting a lot of resources into poverty alleviation through various social welfare programmes.