The Hong Kong Court of Appeal this week unanimously dismissed two appeals from the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA), which attempted to retain the exclusion of same-sex couples from the Public Rental Housing (PRH) policy and Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) as enjoyed by heterosexual couples. This comes after two applicants initially lodged a judicial review against such exclusions in 2020. The present ruling marks a significant step towards inclusive housing policies in Hong Kong. JURIST provides a detailed overview of the case.
The HA had previously argued that the inclusion of same-sex couples in the PRH and HOS policies would infringe upon the welfare rights of heterosexual couples, as protected by Article 36 of the Basic Law. According to them, public housing is intended as an exclusive benefit for heterosexual married couples. However, these claims were dismissed by the court, which clarified that the basic rights to social welfare would not be jeopardized, although waiting times for housing might experience an increase.
Moreover, the HA insisted that homosexual couples could not be compared to heterosexual ones, since the purpose of the housing schemes was to support child-rearing families. The Hong Kong Court decisively rejected this claim as well, stating that the ability to have children was not a prerequisite for access to the schemes. Both couples who could not or did not want to have children were not separated from others. Homosexual couples, having equal rights to form a family through means such as adoption or artificial procreation, were found equally eligible.
This ruling confirms the equivalence of homosexual and heterosexual couples when determining whether families are in economic or financial need of public housing. Previous to this Judgement, same-sex couples could only apply for PRH as a non-elderly one-person applicant. As per HA’s commitments, housing units are expected to be allocated to ‘ordinary families’ within three years. However, these promises explicitly excluded applications from single-person families that were not elderly.
This decision will hopefully accelerate the progress toward equal social welfare benefits for all citizens, regardless of their sexuality. It demonstrates that outdated discriminatory policies and practices are continually being challenged and overhauled to safeguard the diverse needs of today’s society.