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Hong Kong is brimming with neon-lit shopping strips that sell luxury brands, jewels, and technology to eager consumers; the skyscraper-filled skyline contains businesses that make the city one of the world’s major financial hubs. Yet behind the glamorous facade, approximately 200,000 people, including 40,000 children, live in spaces ranging in size from around 15 – 100 square feet.
With a population of nearly 7.5 million and almost no developable land remaining, Hong Kong’s housing market has risen to the most expensive in the world. Pushed out by soaring rents, tens of thousands of people have no other option than to inhabit squatter huts, sub-divided units where the kitchen and toilet merge, coffin cubicles, and cage homes, which are rooms measuring as small as 6’ x 2.5’ traditionally made of wire mesh. “From cooking to sleeping, all activities take place in these tiny spaces,” says Lam. To create the coffin cubicles a 400 square flat will be illegally divided by its owner to accommodate 20 double-decker beds, each costing about HK$2000 (over $250 USD) per month in rent. The space is too small to stand up in.
Better than being homeless, but only just.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Unixnut on Sunday July 30 2017, @11:19AM (3 children)
If your standard of living is to live in a 15sqft cube, how much lower can your standards go? I guess you can start sleeping on the street in order to save up, but soon you will lose your job due to poor hygiene and health reasons, assuming you don't get arrested for sleeping rough (not sure HK policy on homelessness).
Easy to say "oh, just reduce your standard of living, then emigrate", but much harder in practice to do, especially if you are near the bottom rungs of society already.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 30 2017, @12:12PM (1 child)
You're not very imaginative, are you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 30 2017, @06:23PM
You don't seem to be either.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:15PM
I have lived out of my car before, a few times in life. Many people make it with even less.
Even if you don't have buddies who will let you shower at their place, you can still get a gym membership or shower for free on junior college campuses. I have seriously considered doing this again to save up some sheckels but my friends and family keep talking me out of it.
I've also considered living out of the smallest RV with a restroom (a surprising number of tech workers here do it), but that still means driving to work, and that gas bill would be a real bitch.