Hongkong Land offers $15m for unprivileged people, rent relief

A total of $5m was allocated to help unprivileged communities, tenants, and workers.

Hongkong Land donated $15m into Hongkong Land Home Fund to support underprivileged communities and offered rent relief measures for retail tenants amidst the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement, Hongkong Land said that of the earmarked amount into the home fund, an initial $5m was allocated to support 30 non-government organisations (NGOs) to distribute food and other COVID-19 essentials to 72,000 unprivileged individuals and to launch a gift programme for tenants and workers.

Over 200,000 hot meals and 6,000 food bags will be given to poor communities across all 18 districts in the city, whilst 5,000 personal protective items will be provided to frontline workers at NGOs.

Under the home fund, the group launched a gift programme to uplift tenants and employees and also support Po Leung Kuk and Foodlink Foundation in their COVID-19 emergency support programmes. 

Hong Kong Land’s donations were raised from 1:1 to 1.5:1 ratio to match those from employees and tenants, particularly, the group will match $1,500 for a donation of $1,000 to further amplify its contribution to the market’s pandemic efforts.

As for the remaining $10m, Hong Kong Land said it will announce another response programme in due time. 

Aside from this, Hong Kong Land also offered rent waivers to tenants subject to mandatory closure and food and beverage (F&B) tenants.

For tenants facing mandatory closure by the government, they will receive a full waiver of their rents, management fees and other charges during the closure period. Whilst tenants from F&B sector will pay turnover rents for a six-month period from 1 January 2022 to 30 June 2022.

Also, F&B tenants, who are hardest hit by the pandemic, will also receive operational and promotional support measures including flexibility in operating hours to ease the stress of limited manpower and additional promotions to support their takeaway and delivery business. A large-scale promotion programme to drive customer footprint and F&B sales will be launched later this year as pandemic restrictions ease.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong Land said the rent relief will be granted to other tenants on a case-by-case basis, with a strong focus on more vulnerable small and medium-sized businesses.