Hong Kong’s shame: homeless numbers soar amid high rents and squalid living conditions

Skyrocketing rents and squalid conditions in shoebox apartments have pushed more people onto the streets as the number of homeless in the city hit an all-time high last year.

The figure almost tripled over the past decade from 600 in 2004 to 1,614 last October, according to a city-wide headcount survey by 300 volunteers from five universities and four non-governmental organisations.

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“They’ve been left with no choice. Rent has been rising too fast and the living environment is not worth the price,” said Wong Hung, an associate professor in the social work department of the Chinese University.

Most of the homeless are male, aged between 45 and 64. Nearly half have been street sleepers for over 10 years.

The irony is that more than half live in makeshift cardboard shacks under bridges and in parks in West Kowloon with a million-dollar view of skyscrapers with flats selling for HK$30 million.

For 58-year-old Leung Man-kit, rents and living conditions in subdivided flats became too much to bear. “I would spend the whole night battling with wood lice, I couldn’t really get any sleep,” he said.