TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiesTo ensure a safe, comfortable and sustainable living environment for publichousing residents and in light of the principles set out in the 1998 Strategy, the HAadopted a new strategy in 2005 for sustaining the existing public rental housingestates. It will be driven primarily by safety and cost-effectiveness considerations,alongside the existing maintenance regime.4. THE NEW STRATEGYUnder the HA’s regular maintenance programmes, the public rental housing stockis kept in good repair through regular inspection and prompt maintenance. Whilstall blocks are structurally safe, the building conditions are deteriorating at varyingdegrees as a result of ageing and other factors. This has given rise to persistentand multi-faceted problems concerning the upkeep of public rental housing estates.At present, there are a total of eight public rental housing estates aged 40 or above,comprising 64 blocks and some 22,100 units. The number will grow to 17 estates,in the next decade. To face the challenge arising from ageing of the publichousing stock, it becomes imperative for the HA to devise a holistic and systematicapproach to ensure the structural safety of old housing blocks on the one hand, andthe strategy for sustaining or clearing aged estates on the other.To ascertain the building conditions of individual estates, the HA has commenceda comprehensive structural survey on ageing estates. The ensuing paragraphs setout the approach of this strategy.4.1 Comprehensive Structural Appraisal for Aged EstatesIn general, comprehensive structural appraisal will be carried out for public rentalhousing estates around aged 40 or above which are often associated with soaringmaintenance and repair costs. Flexibility will be exercised to extend theinvestigation scheme to other estates taking into account the actual buildingconditions.376