Looking around his cramped home, with his family’s possessions piled up to save space, Chan Chuen Bui, 71, recalled that life was not this hard in his younger days. The Hongkonger, who worked in interior furnishing, said he used to earn between HK$20,000 (S$3,500) and HK$30,000 a month in 1997, and lived in a 300 sq ft low-cost public housing.
For more than 220,000 in appalling subdivided units, dream of better housing seems beyond reach. Government must act quickly on land, housing issues to build more public rental flats, experts say.
Hong Kong’s poor and destitute have long been unable to afford anything but subdivided living spaces. Now Beijing wants the local government to rid the city of these tiny units and “cage homes” by 2049. John Lee Ka Chiu, who will be sworn in as the city’s next leader on the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule.
The long waiting time for public rental flats means the city’s poorest families end up in tiny, shared ‘coffin homes’. More than 220,000 live in Hong Kong’s worst housing, mainly in Kowloon and the New Territories.