People living in cages in Hong Kong

[Darth Wong]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/1 ... index.html

Living in a cage in Hong Kong
By Eunice Yoon, CNN
October 28, 2009 11:17 a.m. EDT

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- If you have ever complained that your apartment is the size of a shoebox, consider the living space of Hong Kong resident Chung For Lau.

Chung lives in a 625 square foot (58.06 square meter) flat here with 18 strangers.

The place is sectioned into tiny cubicles made of wooden planks and wire mesh. Everything he has acquired over the years -- clothes, dishes, figurines, a tired TV set -- is squeezed into this tiny cube, a modernized version of what is known here as a cage home.

With all the buzz over Hong Kong's exorbitant luxury property (like the recent record-breaking sale of a $57 million duplex), it may be hard to believe that people have been living in cage homes in this city for years.

But with Hong Kong home to some of the most densley-populated urban districts in the world, real estate has always come at a premium, no matter how small.

Chung's cage is a newer yet less-desirable model, we are told. The wire mesh one, which resembles an over-sized rabbit hutch, is apparently more comfortable.

Occupants have less privacy, but the temperatures don't get as high as in the wooden-mesh variety. A thermometer in Chung's home reached 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit). Sometimes it gets so hot, Chung said, that he wants to die.

Chung used to be a security guard. In the good old days he earned about $500 (HK$3,875) per month. But as the economic crisis set in, his full time job went to part time work until he was laid off this past summer.

As he stared into his bank passbook, Chung lamented that he wouldn't be able to make the $150 rent (HK$1,160) this month -- these cubes aren't cheap.

They are stacked on two levels -- $100 (HK$775) for a cube on the upper deck and $150 for the lower bunk.

The lower cubes are more expensive because you can just barely stand upright in them. Do the math and the apartment owner is collecting roughly $2,500 a month (HK$19,375) from these people.

The 19 occupants share two toilets. A small rubber hose attached to a leaky faucet is what they use to wash themselves. Social workers who monitor the apartments said the electricity is donated, so a few of them have TVs. One person on the upper deck has an aquarium.

One social workers said that because of the recession these homes are being occupied more frequently by those made jobless -- people in their 30s and 40s. The social worker said none of the younger people wanted to speak on camera for fear their chances of finding work would be hurt.

Chung, 67, is now waiting for welfare to kick in and is on a long list for public housing. The government says it is doing its best to meet its citizens' needs, but Chung says he has lost all hope. Economic recovery or not, he feels forgotten.

It's sad, but we're talking about a society with very little in the way of a social safety net, or regulations in general. And guess what: the NaziHeritage Foundation has declared that Hong Kong is totally awesome, and ranks it as the #1 freest country in the world.

http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx

I think I understand why. Hong Kong is so free that you have the freedom to live in a tiny cage!

[loomer]

This whole thing is pretty fucked up. I mean, they're living in tiny cages. You could make a million jokes about breeding like rabbits, but the whole thing is too sad. Don't we have a member who lives in Hong Kong? Maybe they can give us some more details.

On the one hand, it's good that these folks have a roof over their heads when the work dries up, but jesus. You'd think it'd be just as cheap to make plywood and corrugated iron shacks, long term, and charge the same rent.

(Also, 34 degrees inside? I can't really bring myself to feel horror at that, since I hit that fairly regularly. But I'm guessing that's substantially higher than the average temps in Hong Kong, so it's gotta be fucking those people up.)

[Quetzalcoatl]

I lived in Hong Kong for the first 18 years of my life. This is unfortunately a well-documented and longstanding issue. I was a member of my high school's Habitat for Humanity chapter, and most of the work we did locally was trying to address this problem. Since a great deal of school-regulated community service is bullshit, we ended up doing little.

The problem is essentially thus: space is at a premium in Hong Kong. Even with the incredibly rapid pace of developement, there are simply not enough places to live. Rents are ruinously expensive, to say nothing of actually trying to purchase a home. Despite making white collar salaries, my parents have rented in Hong Kong for almost 30 years. Other members could correct me if I'm wrong, but insofar as I know, there is no system of socialized housing in HK, so everybody is paying these prices. Stories of whole families forced into two room apartments, or even battery chicken cages as in this example, are all too common. I could totally a person, especially one living by himself, to feel compelled into making this kind of decision.

For all this, Hong Kong actually has a lot going for it, at least compared to the rest of China. I've seen terrible conditions on both sides of the border, but the difference in the case of HK is that people can actually stand up and complain about it without being intimidated by local officials. The current recession notwithstanding, the government generally has a lot of money to throw around, so hopefully they will get around to this at some point. A lot of these people are Illegal Immigrants, so the government takes the attitude that they shouldn't be there and thus aren't entitled to any real help. Residents of Hong Kong actually do enjoy some pretty awesome things - healthcare, while not entirely socialized, is so heavily subsidized as to put make it highly affordable.

Oh yes, and 34 degrees centrigrade is what it might be on a hot summer day. Stuffed in a metal cage I'm sure it would be hellish. Add in humidity and Hong Kong's suffocating air pollution, and you can see why the attempt at a city marathon a few years ago ended badly.

[fgalkin]

According to this (not sure how reliable it is, but one of the few sources I could find that's in English),

The problem of bedspace apartments (commonly known as cagehomes) has always been a matter of concern for SoCO. In the Survey of 1997 SoCO found there were 113 such apartments in Hong Kong with a total of 3,000 tenants.

3000 people in a city of 7 million is a tiny amount. According to the same site, there were only around 2,000 homeless in the whole of HK, compared to almost 40,000 in, say, NYC, a city of comparable size in a more hostile climate.

I don't see how this reflects badly on Hong Kong. Yeah, they have people living in crap conditions- so do most cities. What's far more interesting is the huge number of people living in substandard, but not outright horrifying, conditions, but that doesn't provide nice video, so it's not mentioned. Sensationalism ahoy.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin