Hong Kong’s housing minister appeared to be in damage-control mode on Saturday over his recent remarks that substantially cutting waiting times for a public flat could take up to 20 years, a stunning admission that exasperated lawmakers.

Striking a more positive note on his blog, Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan Fan said the average waiting time for a public rental flat could improve in the five-year period to 2032.

“We understand public concerns over the waiting time for public housing. We have been working hard to increase the supply and strive our utmost to provide quality public housing,” he said.

“Given a sufficient supply of land and the fact the number of new applications for public housing has become stable, the average waiting time for public housing could improve visibly in the second five-year period from 2027-28 to 2031-32.”

Frank Chan was recently grilled by lawmakers.

Chan’s latest assessment was in stark contrast with his remarks in a Legislative Council meeting last week where he said attaining the three-year targeted waiting time for public housing could take up to 20 years. The admission angered members of Legco’s housing panel who demanded the government do better to meet one of the most pressing challenges facing Hong Kong.

By the end of June, about 153,600 families were waiting on average 5.8 years to be allocated a home – the longest in 22 years – and many are forced to live in cramped spaces such as subdivided flats while they wait.

The waiting time is twice as long as the Housing Authority’s pledge to deliver a home within three years. About 90,000 applicants have been in the queue for more than three years.

Hong Kong has the world’s least affordable residential property market, and Beijing has repeatedly called the housing shortage a deep-seated problem that must be addressed.

Chan, who also chairs the authority, pointed to about 350 hectares (865 acres) of recently identified land as more than enough to meet the official projected demand for 301,000 public flats over the next decade.

“We are speeding up the implementation. Among the 330,000 units to be built, 100,000 could be rolled out from next year to 2026-27,” he said.

Chan said for the second five-year period from 2027-28 to 2031-32, around 230,000 flats could be available, or about 54,000 annually including 8,000 vacant ones returned to the authority every year.

He also pledged to offer those in need support such as cash subsidies, transitional housing and rent controls for cage homes.

To tackle the long-term housing woes, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has set aside HK$11.6 billion (US$1.49 billion) to build 20,000 transitional homes, and launched a three-year cash subsidy scheme for them to apply.

Lam recently criticised the authority, the main provider of public housing in Hong Kong, for delays in the construction of new estates. Authority members have blamed other government departments for delays in handing over spade-ready sites for use.