Lai Shan Zse moved quickly, closed the grungy, dimly lit the stairwell of the locked unit in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district. The social worker knocks on the door and announces his arrival, enters the small entrance and passes the tiled kitchen, from which the old woman wavers, and steps into a thin hall lined with plywood cupboards. For there are individual units; Hong Kong’s infamous “pocket houses”“, the dwelling of dozens of tenants in spaces not much larger than one bed, two high up to the ceiling.
Sze, director of the civil rights group Soco Community Association (Soco), knocked on two doors, examined a stack of papers piled high with a map of residents sketched out in another hand. Some faces come out, and he hands out information sheets, and checks the names of residents who have not registered before.
“This is the first time I have lived in a house like this,” says one woman from the top of the coffin house. He lived in Shenzhen, in mainland China, but after he moved Hong Kong she and her husband separated.
“My family, relatives and friends, if they see me like this,” he said, asking not to be named or photographed. “I’m just introducing you to the living conditions here in Hong Kong, even for foreign workers like me.”
Hong Kong is famous for its cramped and tiny apartments, or “shoebox housing,” a name that somehow still doesn’t fully convey the claustrophobic nature of the spaces. New reforms announced this year attempt to tackle the problem, with major improvements and regulations being mandated to take place by the end of 2016.
But critics called them out indiscreetnot to attack the worst types of housing – box and cage houses – and to reduce the risk of a higher supply of public housing to boost demand.
There are three main types of these small living spaces. Regular subdivision units (SDUs) are larger, averaging 13 sq meters according to recent studies, but are often inhabited by joint or whole families. The legume-like coffin houses are a little bigger than a single bed, and only high enough to sit on. Cage houses are similar in size, but made of wire.
A Chinese neighbor, Mr Lau, has lived in a box house for more than a decade. Now, he is near the window looking out on Shanghai Street. “It’s not too much to complain about,” he said. It’s appropriate for his work as a way to get cleaner than he lost his restaurant during the pandemic. He is afraid to live alone in public housing.
“If you don’t mind and close the door, you can sleep here,” Lau said, laying down on the bed. “But many questions, like many, is complicated.”
On cue, as Lau and Sze begin talking animatedly to each other, another resident quietly shouts from the next room.
Converting shoebox houses into ‘basic housing units’
The number of caged houses – bed spaces made of actual wire – has fallen dramatically, but it is still estimated that more than 200,000 people live in approximately 100,000 regular SDUs and smaller bed spaces packed into apartments across the city.
They are also expensive – studies have found that the average SDU returns they are higher per square meter than each room. It is a profitable income for the owners who make more than the entire apartment rental. It is Hong Kong are listed regularly as the worst city for housing affordability.
The Hong Kong government has for decades addressed the city’s housing inequality by forcing it, which these houses so powerfully illustrate. Recently, that pressure has increasingly come from Beijing, now in firmer control over the semi-autonomous city.
In 2021, the top official of the Communist Party in Hong Kong, Xia Baolong, visited the administrators and urged them to “fix the deep-rooted problems” in housing and to lose the cage of houses and SDUs by 2049. In response, the Hong Kong government launched an investigation. in 2023, and in October finally announced new reforms.
The measures establish a minimum area size of 8 square meters for SDUs, and mandate an independent toilet, at least a proper window, and a case without fire. All must be registered and regularly inspected from late 2026, and will be called “basic housing units”.
But critics said the new standard is only one square meter larger than the average prison cell in Hong Kong, and does not increase by units that house joint or whole families. An estimated 50,000 children live in SDUs. About a third of all SDUs are currently estimated to be below standards and in need of renovation.
The Guardian Housing Bureau told the Guardian that enforcement of private rental units based on how many people lived in one was “harsh”.
“Furthermore, there are opinions in the community which suggest that some SDU singleton houses do not want the minimum floor area requirement to be higher in order to maintain rental costs,” said the spokesperson.
‘Landlords don’t belong’
In another Mong Kok building, Sze stops an old man who is preparing to leave his SDU because the ceiling keeps collapsing. He points to an empty room that he will enter, which Lai Shan says will meet new standards. Like the current room, it has a private bathroom and a kitchen – it shares the same room.
The new regulations do not target box and cage homes. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said they are already governed by specific regulations, but critics say the 30-year-old rules make it easy for landlords to rent premises with 12 or more beds. “The government said it wants to remove the ‘low-quality’ sub-divided units, but the ‘pocket houses’ are the worst,” housing activist Kenny Ng told the Hong Kong Press.
The housing bureau said it would “step up” the enforcement of cage-house laws.
Sze claims that no homes have been visited by the Guardian so far. “[Landlords] I don’t care how many people live inside,” he said.
There are also fears of what price improvements will do. “When the quality is upgraded, incomes will go up,” Hong Kong lawmaker Michael Tien, who previously advocated for rental boxes, told reporters. Rents for pocket houses, the size of a single bed, are as much as HK$3,000 (£310) a month.
Sze says that making one standard for all housing would be to remove the box and cage houses “but if the government doesn’t have enough public housing or a good plan to withdraw, this will be a problem” and could force people into the streets or into violence. illegal SDUs The only thing that can address the problem is to “develop more land and build more public housing,” he says.
Hong Kong government he said 308,000 new public housing is needed. The new reforms include a pledge to build 43,600 public housing flats, part of a current target of around 190,000, including temporary housing units, by 2030. The waiting list is now more than five years long, with around 200,000 audits.
The government says no one should be left homeless, noting that 60% of SDU residents are eligible for public housing. But those he said Tenants who had lost their flats by the new regulations would not be preferred before others. “[Prioritising them] will encourage people to move into large subdivisions, hoping that it will be phased out,” said housing secretary Winnie Ho, according to the Hong Kong Press.
Few residents who speak to the Guardian are football.
“The government says this, but they can’t do it,” said Coco, a 24-year-old SDU resident.
“They want to renovate a few of these houses so that they have windows, but [the landlords] it cannot be done because it costs money… And even with money it is not feasible. I think there are some things they just can’t do.”