Can’t get a Hong Kong flat? Try boat, or shipping container instead

Relaxing on a hammock at the top deck of his 17.5-metre boat anchored 200 metres off Sam Mun Tsai pier in Tai Po district, retiree Jacky Leung soaks up the view of blue skies and green peaks around Plover Clove. Leung lives in a flat with his family, but chooses to sleep on the boat two to three nights a week. Who can blame him? He has 1,500 sq ft of space here – compared to 300 sq ft at home – that costs only HK$1,500 a month for anchorage.

Leung believes life afloat could be an ideal stopgap measure for young couples struggling to find affordable housing. But his advert offering the floating home for lease landed him in hot water with the Marine Department earlier this year.

Officials informed him that, as the holder of a leisure boat licence, a long-term accommodation arrangement with a third party would breach hotel and guest house regulations. Had his boat been moored in the more exclusive environs of a yacht club, he’d probably have escaped scrutiny from the department’s patrol vessels.

“I have friends who’ve had to remain apart since they got married, and others living in subdivided flats. Why can’t they buy a boat to live on?” says Leung, who bought his for HK$300,000 several years ago, and points out that a car parking space costs about HK$1 million.

Leung says he had also hoped to help revive the centuries-old tradition of living at sea in Hong Kong, where fishing was a major industry until the 1960s, when more than 10,000 boats plied their trade.

As fishing and agriculture waned into relative insignificance amid the boom in manufacturing and service industries, and a series of fires and typhoons wreaked havoc among fisherfolk, the city’s boat dwellers began migrating into public housing estates. According to the Marine Department, only four “squatter boat” licences remain valid from that era.