No room of their own: Hong Kong youth impatient for revamped hostel scheme to take off while some operators weigh potential of tourism comeback
- NGOs can rent hotels and guest houses to run as hostels, aiming for 3,000 spaces over five years
- Hong Kong has been easing Covid curbs in phases, with hotel quarantine already dropped
Sharing a 350 sq ft public flat in Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung with his mother, older sister and two cats, Sit Kai, 30, has often longed for space of his own.
A community officer with a housing concern group, he is a part-time social work student and sometimes has to work late from his bed, discussing projects with his classmates while his mother and sister are asleep.
“I’ve tried lowering my voice, but it didn’t work and led to arguments,” he said.
He was delighted when the government announced recently that it was expanding the city’s youth hostel scheme to turn 3,000 hotel rooms into hostels for young working adults aged 18 to 30 within five years.
It promises rents that are up to 40 per cent lower than the market price, and successful tenants must commit to serve the community for 200 hours a year.
Sit said he would apply as soon as the first batch became available. He will be able to rent for two years, with the possibility of extending to five years.
“I’ll be able to turn up the volume when I am listening to songs. I can live on my terms,” he said, anticipating the change.
He aimed to offer tuition and interest classes for grass-roots students as his community service.
Hong Kong leader proposes increasing spaces at youth hostel scheme by 3,000
Under the revamped scheme, NGOs can apply for government subsidies to rent hotels and guest houses which they will manage for the young people who move in.
The hostel idea goes back to 2011, when the government offered to fund NGOs interested in building dormitories from scratch.
So far, only one block has been built by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups in Tai Po with 80 beds which can be rented for roughly HK$5,000 (US$639) a month for up to five years.
Another 2,600 spaces are expected to be completed over the next three years, with 700 more still in the early stages of planning or preparing for construction.
Competition was fierce when the first hostel at Tai Po opened for applications two years ago. It was oversubscribed by around 12 times.
Among those who landed a spot was Louis Li Chi-yin, 28, a finance graduate who moved out of his family home in Tuen Mun, where he lived since childhood.
He said he felt fortunate to be with his new friends at the dormitory when Covid-19 pandemic restrictions meant people could not move about freely.
“Most of us worked from home and had a lot of fun together. We had dinner, sang karaoke and played basketball together,” he recalled. “It was like my university dorm life in the UK a few years ago.”
Hong Kong hotels shy away from bid to turn them into hostels for the young
He and four other tenants working in the design and technology industry also got together to design a talent-matching website.
Although they did not obtain funding to press on, Li said he was glad they started, and he later got together with new partners to revamp the prototype into a career consultation platform.
The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, which operates the hostel, said tenants had been creative in volunteering to serve the community despite their irregular working hours.
Among other things, they distributed mooncakes to the homeless and set up a neighbourhood “sharing fridge” to give out masks and food.
The NGO’s supervisor, Carrie Wong Sau-yee, hoped the government would be flexible in calculating the service hours under the new scheme, to allow tenants to be creative about what they do for the community.
“It is difficult to count the hours in some cases,” she said.
Nearly 1 in 4 young Hongkongers from low-income families ‘lying flat’: survey
Visiting Hong Kong in July, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the city’s future lay in youths, and urged the government to solve their housing and job woes.
With the youth hostel programme being expanded, welfare groups have to secure premises from hotel and guest house owners.
The government has said it would give priority to applications by NGOs that secure a lease for the whole premises for up to five years, and aim to deliver the first batch of rooms by the first quarter of next year.
But David Leung Tai-wai, founder-chairman of the Hong Kong Guest Houses Association, did not think many owners would be keen on such long leases especially if there was a chance that tourists might return to the city.
“We can only offer two-year rentals at most. Our occupancy rate increases whenever Covid-19 social restrictions are relaxed,” Leung said.
Hong Kong has already eased its restrictions for visitors, who no longer have to go through hotel quarantine. They have to undergo three days of medical surveillance with some limitations on moving about, while those arriving on group tours will be allowed to enter designated tourist attractions.
“As the city resumes normal activity, we have to do our calculations and earn back the money we lost over the past three years,” Leung said.
He said that so far, there has been interest in only one block with 30 rooms and another 20 rooms dispersed in different hostels in Kowloon.
New hostel targets city’s young adults, but advocate says rent is too high
With experience in operating transitional housing for young public housing applicants, Alice Lau Oi-sze, chief executive of the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society, Kowloon, said she was hoping to join the new scheme by renting a block for at least three years.
She hoped the government could explain to hotel and guest house owners that helping young people was a shared social responsibility.
“The younger generation can move up the social ladder and beat poverty only if they receive help for a few years,” she said.
