More public housing should be built for people in cage homes, who must pay soaring rents to live in intolerable conditions, social activists told legislators yesterday.
The Society for Community Organisation (SOCO), which met members of the Legislative Council's complaints division, said 100,000 people lived in such inadequate accommodation.
'Living conditions are intolerable. Added to this, the rents of these homes keep rising. Many of these residents are forced to pay rents [per square foot] equal to luxury housing but live in places with safety risks,' SOCO social worker Sze Lai-shan said.
Four people died in a fire in Ma Tau Wai last week in a building where most of the flats had been divided into cubicles, blocking the rear exits.
Among 30 cubicle and cage residents who joined SOCO representatives at the meeting was 59-year-old jobless man Chan Chi-kin, who lives in a 70 sq ft cubicle in Sham Shui Po with his nine-year-old son.
'My original flat in the same area cost only HK$500 a month in 2005 and I did not have to pay for the water and electricity. Now I have to pay HK$1,500 a month for the same flat and I have to pay the water and electricity bills on my own,' he said.
The family's sole source of income is a HK$5,800 monthly government welfare allowance.