Just Saying | Hong Kong’s new housing policy: if you can’t beat ’em, just join ’em

Yonden Lhatoo objects to the precedent the government is setting by legalising the highly questionable practice of subdividing flats to rent out to the needy

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Wong Chak-ming, 12, in his 30 sq ft “coffin home” in Sham Shui Po, one of five carved out of a 500 sq ft flat. Photo: David Wong

Published: 3:45pm, 13 Jul 2017Updated: 7:26pm, 13 Jul 2017

I find myself constantly picking my jaw off the floor when it comes to the dystopian disgrace that is the state of housing in this city, and every outrageous new trend associated with it.

The latest shocker comes courtesy of our new housing minister, Frank Chan Fan, who is looking to effectively legalise the abhorrent practice of subdividing flats instead of condemning it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income earners, who wouldn’t be able to afford Hong Kong’s ridiculous private housing rents if they sold their kidneys, are crammed into mostly dilapidated tenement and industrial buildings where already space-starved flats are partitioned into tiny, self-contained cubicles masquerading as human habitats.

The Secretary for Transport and Housing, Frank Chan, at one of the grass-roots homes he visited in Sham Shui Po, on a trip organised by the Society for Community Organisation on July 9. David Wong

It’s not just in Sham Shui Po: Hong Kong’s cubicle flats reach the fancy heights of Mid-Levels

Take the case of 12-year-old Wong Chak-ming, who lives in one such cubicle measuring just 30 sq ft with his single mother in Sham Shui Po, the city’s poorest district. He sleeps, eats and studies in a space that can just about fit a bunk bed and a little desk lit up by a single fluorescent tube.