Sleeping on the street is bad enough, but Hong Kong's notorious cage homes and cubicles are even worse. That is the view of an academic who has studied homelessness in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Korea for a decade. 'I was really shocked and surprised when I first went to cage houses and cubicles here. It was astonishing,' Osaka City University researcher Geerhardt Kornatowski said, referring to the Hong Kong flats divided into bed spaces walled off by wire barricades. Kornatowski, who has visited Hong Kong more than 10 times in the past six years, told of the reaction of an Indian scholar with expertise in urban development when he took her to a cage house. 'She said it was the first time that she had ever witnessed a living environment worse than an Indian slum. I cannot agree more - living on the streets is better than in cage houses,' he said. 'It is unbearable. There is no privacy at all and everyone has to pack together in a tiny place with poor hygiene. The lack of windows and air conditioning means poor ventilation and that is bad for people's health as well.' About 100,000 people live in cages and cubicles in Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok, Kwun Tong, To Kwa Wan and Wan Chai, according to the Society for Community Organisation. While the cramped spaces offer the most affordable accommodation for the poor, per square foot they are among the most expensive. A typical bed space costs up to HK$93.30 a square foot, compared to HK$72 a square foot for a spacious four-bedroom luxury flat in Stanley. In Japan, the monthly rent of the most affordable housing with much better living conditions takes about 25 per cent of a recipient's welfare money. In Hong Kong, a cage home can take up to 40 per cent. Kornatowski described the conditions as 'almost subhuman' but added: 'The biggest headache is that if this housing is eliminated, where will these poor people live?' He said Hong Kong should redefine the meaning of homeless to cover not only street sleepers but also cage dwellers - 'then more should be done to help these vulnerable people'. The only way out for the cage dwellers, Kornatowski said, was public housing, which accommodates nearly half of the population in Hong Kong, a much higher percentage than in the other three places he has studied. 'However, it is extremely difficult for people living in cage houses and cubicles, who are mostly single, to move into public housing here,' he said. Sze Lai-shan, of the Society for Community Organisation, agreed. 'There are about 152,000 families or 320,000 people waiting for public housing. While for families the average waiting time is three years, the 63,400 single applicants have to wait more than 10 years,' she said. Kornatowski said he wanted to bridge the gap between field work and government policies in a bid to help the homeless. 'In Japan, our school has worked out a platform so that various non-government organisations get together from time to time to share with others what can be done to improve these people's lives,'' he said. 'There is no such platform in Hong Kong, though many NGOS told me they would love to join if there was one.' 38 degree The temperature recorded in some cage homes because of poor ventilation, overcrowding and lack of air conditioning