First Multigeneration Housing Projects For Elderly In HK
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) is kicking off Hong Kong’s first “multigeneration” housing project, offering facilities that cater equally for the young and the elderly, as the city’s largest developer adjusts its real estate designs to a rapidly greying population.</s
Published -
Apr 9, 2021 4:08 AM
Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) is kicking off Hong Kong’s first “multigeneration” housing project, offering facilities that cater equally for the young and the elderly, as the city’s largest developer adjusts its real estate designs to a rapidly greying population. Up to 20 per cent, or 303 of the 1,1518 apartments at the developer’s proposed project in Tung Shing Lei, a seven-minute walk from the Yuen Long subway station in the New Territories, will be configured specifically for the elderly, with a wellness centre that sits alongside a kindergarten and a nursery, so that three generations of a family can have easy access to the facilities. “There is a need in the market” for property projects to cater specifically to the elderly, said Spencer Lu, SHKP’s project director at at the planning and development department. “Our project feature elderly friendly designs for grandparents, while the children and grandchildren can live in a separate (standard) unit in the same housing estate.” Hong Kong has a rapidly greying population, with the number of residents older than 65 years projected to increase to 2.59 million by 2066, or 37 per cent of the city’s population, according to local authorities. Men and women in the city have also lived longer than other populations since 2010, with the median male life expectancy at 82 years, and female at 88 years, according to the World Bank’s data. Such a demographic profile is exerting specific needs on housing, especially since Hong Kong families put more of their elderly in retirement homes than other markets, at 7 per cent compared with between 3 and 4 per cent in Japan and North America, Lu said. “Families that can afford to buy two homes are financially sound, which means they have alternative options to take care of their parents,” said JLL’s chairman Joseph Tsang in Hong Kong. “It is worth it for private developers to test the market as ageing is a growing trend.”
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