Chief Executive John Lee said on Wednesday that the government will step up its support for young people hoping to buy subsidised flats.

He announced in his Policy Address that the Housing Authority would allocate an extra ballot number to young families and single-person applicants aged below 40, to increase their chances of getting an apartment under the Home Ownership Scheme.

Lee added that starting from the next White Form Secondary Market Scheme (WSM) exercise, the quota for those flats will increase by 1,500 -- all of which will be allocated to young family applicants and one-person applicants under the age of 40.

And in a bid to encourage more public housing tenants to buy Home Ownership Scheme units, the government said it will revise the allocation between green form, or current public housing residents, and white form applicants from its current ratio of 4:6 to 5:5.

Meanwhile, as part of efforts to crack down on tenancy abuse, the Housing Authority will launch the "Cherish Public Housing Resources Award Scheme" in January next year, offering rewards to anyone providing intelligence that helps to identify such cases.

The CE also said the government hopes to cut the average waiting time for public rental housing from the current 5.5 years to 4.5 years in 2026-27.