From a one-room “shoebox” cubicle to an even smaller “coffin home, ” housing costs are among this wealthy Asian financial centre’s biggest problems.
HONG KONG—Li Suet-wen’s dream home would have a bedroom and living room where her two children could play and study. The reality is a one-room “shoebox” cubicle, one of five partitioned out of a small apartment in an aging walk-up in a working class Hong Kong neighbourhood.
Into the 120-square foot room are crammed a bunk bed, small couch, fridge, washing machine and tiny table. On one side of the door is a combined toilet and shower stall, on the other a narrow counter with a hot plate and sink. Clothes drying overhead dim light from a bare fluorescent tube. It feels like a storage unit, not a home.
Li’s 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter often ask, “Why do we always have to live in such small flats? Why can’ t we live in a bigger place?” Li said.
“I say it’s because mommy doesn’ t have any money, ” said Li, a single mom whose $794 a month in rent and utilities eats up almost half the $1,766 she earns at a bakery decorating cakes.
Housing costs are among this wealthy Asian financial centre’s biggest problems.
Some 200,000 of Hong Kong’s 7.3 million residents live in “subdivided units.” That’s up 18 per cent from four years ago and includes 35,500 children 15 and under, government figures show. The figure doesn’ t include many thousands more living in other “inadequate housing” such as rooftop shacks, metal cages resembling rabbit hutches and “coffin homes” made of stacked wooden bunks.
It’s a universe away from the lifestyles enjoyed by the rich living in lavish mountaintop mansions and luxury penthouses, or even those with middle-class accommodation in this former British colony.
Hong Kong regularly tops global property price surveys. Rents and home prices have steadily risen and are now at or near all-time highs.
The U. S.-based consultancy Demographia has ranked it the world’s least affordable housing market for seven straight years, beating Sydney, Vancouver and 400 other cities. Median house prices are 19 times the median income.
