| On the margins of a booming city : housing for the poor in Hong Kong |
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On the margins of a booming city :
housing for the poor in Hong Kong
China News Forum, Summer 1996
Glittering new sky scrapers and the heady rush of huge financial deals are the image Hong Kong projects to the world. But millions of people in the territory have not reaped the benefits of Hong Kong's economic miracle. They live packed into tiny spaces because housing is just too expensive, Hong Kong's Society for Community Organization (SoCO) has found. The most extreme manifestation of this is the "cage people," who inhabit bedspaces piled one above another, each surrounded by wire netting to protect the residents' meagre possessions. SoCO argues that the Hong Kong government has not devoted sufficient economic or political resources to ensuring that the poorest citizens in the territory can find decent, affordable housing.
A 1989 study of housing costs in various developed countries found that Hong Kong had the highest housing price to income ratio. The average rental for a 500 square foot flat is HKD7,200 (the current exchange rate is about HKD7.5 to US$1), while the median family income is HKD11,000, and thus the rent to income ratio is 65 percent. Since that time, the purchase and rental prices of flats have continued to escalate, as property speculation in the territory has increased. The price of private domestic buildings increased 471 percent between 1979 and 1993. Under such circumstances, low income people often have to live in over-crowded accomodation of extremely poor quality.
According to the Hong Kong government census of 1991, 48 percent of people living in the territory were housed in the public sector. Hong Kong's public housing program dates to Christmas Day 1953, when a fire razed a squatter area in Shek Kip Mei. In response to the public outcry, the government launched an emergency shelter program which was replaced within a year by permanent housing. For its first 20 years, the program's emphasis was on providing accommodation in low-cost, high-density housing estates for victims of natural disasters and displaced urban squatters.
However, since the old public housing estates were of poor quality, maintenance costs were high and rental revenues were low. In the 1980s, the government started to change its housing strategy from providing low cost, cheap rent flats to creating high cost housing with high rent or purchase price. In a large public housing redevelopment scheme, the original land was used to build units for public sale or commanding high rentals. Also, through administrative measures low income earners were increasingly pushed out of the central urban districts to remote areas or new towns. Thus public housing became a profit-oriented program which is not responsive to the needs of the poorest groups.
Despite enormous increases in Hong Kong's Gross Domestic Product, the Hong Kong Housing Authority has not significantly increased the production of public housing in the last 15 years. The growth in government expenditure on housing has remained very small. Furthermore, the government has not employed all available positive measures, such as rental subsidies and increasing the supply of public housing, to enable the poor to solve their housing problems and to monitor the private housing market. On the contrary, legislative and administrative methods have been employed to decontrol the market and suppress housing demand.
The huge public housing program was not targetted at low-income earners in private housing, and the housing needs of various disadvantaged groups have been neglected. In 1994, a study of various data sources found there were 449,827 Hong Kong households living in inadequate housing - non-self contained units - a total of 1,283,945 people. These included "cage-home" lodgers, single people (known in Hong Kong as "singletons"), roof-top hut dwellers and sub-tenants in old private housing.
The most deprived group in slum areas is middle-aged and old singletons living in bedspace apartments in old private housing. Inside a bedspace apartment there are rows of bunk beds in double and triple tiers, with one lodger in each bed. Typically, the beds are surrounded by wire to protect the belongings of the lodger, and so such apartments are known as "cage homes." A typical example is a cage home at 24 Fuk Tsuen Street in Taikoktsui, where around 100 lodgers live in a flat of 1,000 square feet. Normally, each flat will have one or two toilets and a kitchen shared by all the inhabitants. Not only are such flats severely overcrowded, they are often also fire traps.
The highest rent for a bedspace is around HKD800, while the poor people who live in them only earn around HKD2,000 to 3,000 per month. These elderly singletons often pay high rents to live in such inhumane conditions for almost half of their lives; some have been resident in cage homes for over 30 years. Living in a "cage" deprives the individual of human dignity.
Officials have estimated that about 3,200 people are now living in bedspace apartments. However, a confidential Housing Authority report in 1992 put the number of single people living in such apartments at 10,000. The problem of the cage homes is just the tip of the iceberg: from our observation, many low income singletons are also living in loft spaces and cubicles, with an estimated 50,000 in inadequate housing in the old urban areas of Hong Kong.
A total of about 120,000 households, including families with children, live in old private tenements in flats partitioned into cubicles, in loft spaces and bedspaces. A flat of 600 square feet is often partitioned and shared by seven or eight households. The average market rental for an 80 square foot cubicle is around HKD1,600, but the families living in such apartments generally earn a total of only HKD5,000 or 6,000 per month.
Some squatters in Hong Kong live on top of old private buildings, in so-called roof-top huts. On the roof of a Mongkok building, for example, there are 40 such huts in a double tier. Residents either buy or rent the huts at a price ranging from HKD40,000 to 100,000. However, since these dwellings are considered illegal by the authorities, residents have no security of tenure and do not receive any compensation if evicted. According to government statistics, the population living in such housing is 13,000 persons.
Besides those resident in old private tenements, 462,400 people are still living in old, dilapidated public housing estates, 105,400 people in temporary housing areas set up by the government, 207,400 in squatter camps and 2,000 people on the street.
However, the millions of Hong Kong residents living in inadequate housing have not been a sufficient consideration in the formulation of government housing and land use policies.
To accommodate the current expansion of the financial, service and commercial sectors, the government is getting rid of slum areas in the core urban districts containing old private housing in order to build offices and hotels. In 1991, a massive urban renewal scheme was introduced to restructure land use in Hong Kong. Private developers have rushed to cash in, earning huge sums of money from these redevelopment projects. Overall, 500,000 residents, particularly low-income people, are expected to be affected.
The government's laissez-faire development policies favor developers and generally ignore the rights of affected tenants. If a redevelopment will increase the number of dwellings and the Building Office has approved the plan, the courts will normally agree that the project is "in the public interest" and issue a consent order for it. Hardships suffered by affected tenants will not be considered, while the law only requires developers to pay small "ex-gratia payments" of several hundred to a few thousand Hong Kong dollars to the tenants. Former tenants generally will not be able to afford the higher rents in the redeveloped buildings. Developers have no responsibility for rehousing affected people and the government says that this is a "private" matter between the landlords and the tenants.
Few Hong Kong people are eligible for rented public housing, since the upper family income limit for eligibility is only HKD11,400 per month. Rather than make public rental housing available to a broader range of residents who cannot afford the astronomical property prices, the government has built flats which it sells for 60 or 70 percent of the market price to families whose incomes are between the eligibility level and 44,000.
Even with low eligibility criteria, as of March 1994, the Housing Authority stated that there were 151,000 registered applicants on the waiting list for public housing. Between 1985 and 1992, only 14,000 units were issued to waiting list applicants every year. In the urban areas, applicants had to wait an average of 10 years to get housed, while even in some parts of the New Territories the average wait was 6.5 years.
At the same time, the production of public rental flats has been declining, both in absolute numbers and in relation to accommodation for public sale. An increasing proportion of Housing Authority dwellings are allocated for public sales, with a recent reduction from 60 percent rental to 40 percent sales to 54:46, a ratio projected to move to 45:55 by the year 2000.
Policies on public housing also discriminate against singletons and new immigrant families. Prior to 1985, low income singletons were not allowed to apply for public housing at all, and thus a great demand for single-person accommodation accumulated. Now, only 500 to 1,000 housing units are allocated to singleton applicants every year, while nearly 30,000 people are on the waiting list for such housing. New immigrant families are not eligible for public housing, however adverse their living conditions, until at least half of the family has lived in Hong Kong for seven years. At present, 40,000 people emigrate to Hong Kong from China every year, while 75,000 children will arrive in Hong Kong under family reunification programs after 1997. Thus the housing situation for new immigrants may continue to deteriorate.
In the light of the problems outlined above, SoCO and the Hong Kong Human Rights Commission recommend that the Hong Kong government take the following steps to address the serious problems of housing faced by low-income people in the territory.
- Housing rights, as described in the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, should be incorporate into domestic law and policy guidelines, while all laws which violate such rights should be amended.
- A central coordinating body to monitor housing problems of all kinds should be established.
- Positive measures, including the passage of legislation, should be taken to curb the escalation of property prices and rents, while assistance should be given to citizens who cannot afford to purchase property or pay high rents.
- The production of affordable public rental housing should be increased, while rents in the private market should be subject to monitoring and control.
- Discrimination against disadvantaged groups such as cage home dwellers, new immigrant families, low-income tenants and roof-top hut residents should be eliminated. Proper housing and services should be provided to these vulnerable groups.
- Forced evictions should be halted while those affected by urban renewal should be guaranteed fair and equitable treatment with respect to compensation and provision of alternative accommodation.
- Channels for the participation of citizens in the making of policy on housing and land should be opened.
CAGE DWELLERS: TWO PROFILES
Lo Chek, 69, rented a bedspace in a 30-year-old flat in Taikoktsui, which he shares with more than 100 other tenants. It is excessively noisy, overcrowded and filthy. Lo leads a tedious life, sitting next to the entrance and letting the time tick past.
Lo left his village in Guangdong and went to Hong Kong before 1949, arriving there at the age of 19.
"In those days," he recalled, "I didn掐 have money. Neither did I have food..." During the Japanese occupation, he smuggled food to Hong Kong, a difficult and risky business. After the liberation of Hong Kong, Uncle Lo worked as a street cleaner.
"I earned two dollars a day," he said. He worked hard and was promoted to head of the team, with his wages rising from HKD60 to HKD200 per month. However, Lo said he easily got into quarrels with other people, and he left that job. During that time, it was not easy to find a job in Hong Kong, so he returned to the mainland.
But life in the mainland was difficult too. Lo decided to go back to Hong Kong where he worked as a coolie for the next 40-plus years. Like other such people, he led a simple life. Sometimes he gambled on horse and dog races, or on cards, but with restraint.
Uncle Lo was still working until a few months ago, when he found that he was suffering from a lung disease. He quit his job and his health is better now. But being out of a job means he has no money to live on. In the absence of a comprehensive social security system, his illness has caused him great difficulties.
Lo said he had attempted to apply for public assistance, but the complicated procedures scared him off. He said he did not want to ask for help from relatives. At present he is eating into his meagre savings, but he has little left. Although he has not fully recovered, he has started taking work again.
"I prefer to earn my own living and lead an independent life," he said. "I will rely on my bare hands until my last breath."
Uncle Lee, 91, is the oldest tenant in the cage home. His wife died more than 40 years ago. He has lost contact with his two sons. He only has a few nephews in the mainland. He lives a solitary life in Hong Kong.
Lee used to be a seaman and went to many places around the world. He went to Hong Kong with his family when he was 30. Reminiscing, he heaved a deep sigh.
"Life was better when I was young."
He has lived in the cage home for 31 years. The monthly rent increased from less than HKD10 to start with to the present HKD150. The living environment is appalling - noisy, overcrowded, tenants always arguing over trivial matters. But Lee is used to this way of living, even describing himself as content with his life.
The profiles are taken from Survey Report on the "Cage Men", 1991, published by Society for Community Organization (SoCO); the rest of the text is excerpted from A Report to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on Housing Rights Violations and Poverty Problem in Hong Kong, 1994, prepared by SoCO and Hong Kong Human Rights Commission. Both available from: SoCO, 52 Princess Margaret Road, 3/Fl., Kowloon, Hong Kong.