Lai Shan Zse moves quickly through the dingy, dimly lit stairwell of a unit block in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district. The social worker knocked on the door to announce her arrival, entered a small foyer, passed a tiled kitchenette where an elderly woman waved, and entered a narrow hall lined with what looked like plywood cupboards. These are actually individual units, Hong Kong's infamous “coffin houses,” housing dozens of tenants in a space the size of a bed, stacked two to the ceiling.
Zee, vice president of the civil rights organization Society for Community Organizations (Soco), taps on several doors, holding a stack of paper with hastily drawn maps of residents in her other hand. Several faces emerged and she handed out information sheets, checking the names of residents who had not previously registered.
“This is the first time I've lived in a house like this,” says one of the women in the house with the coffin on the top floor. She used to live in Shenzhen, mainland China, but separated from her husband after moving to Hong Kong.
“If my family, relatives and friends saw me like this, they would be embarrassed,” she said, asking that her name and photo not be taken. “I'm just introducing the living conditions here in Hong Kong, including for foreign workers like me.”
Hong Kong is famous for its cramped, tiny apartments, or “shoebox houses,” but somehow this name still doesn't fully convey the claustrophobic nature of this space. New reforms announced this year seek to address this problem by requiring major improvements and regulations to be introduced by the end of 2026.
But critics labeled them as not ambitiousdoes not target the worst types of housing, namely coffin and basket houses, and there is a risk that public housing expansion work will not be able to meet demand and the city's overall supply will decline.
There are three main types of this small living space. Typical subdivision units (SDUs) are larger, averaging 13 square meters according to recent research, but often house couples or entire families. The pod-shaped coffin house is slightly larger than a single bed and only tall enough to sit on. Cage houses are similarly sized but made of wire.
The Chinese woman's neighbor, Lau, has been living in a coffin house for more than 10 years. Now he has it near a window overlooking Shanghai Street. “There's not much to complain about,” he says. After losing his restaurant job due to the pandemic, he is now working as a city cleaner. He is afraid of living alone in public housing.
“If you want, you can sleep here as long as you close the door,'' Lau said as he lay down on the bed. “But there are many problems, including too many people and complexity.”
On cue, Lau and Se began talking animatedly to each other, when another resident from the next room yelled for them to be quiet.
Converting a shoebox house into a “basic house”
Although the number of cage homes (stacked bed spaces made of actual cage wire) has decreased dramatically, there are still approximately 100,000 regular SDUs and smaller bed spaces crammed into apartments across the city. It is estimated that over 200,000 people live there.
It’s also expensive – research shows that the average rent for an SDU is higher per square meter than a single apartment. This is a lucrative income for landlords who earn more than they would by renting out an entire apartment. Hong Kong is regularly listed It is known as the worst city in the world for housing affordability.
Hong Kong's government has been under pressure for decades to address the city's housing inequality, which these homes illustrate. In recent years, that pressure has increased from Beijing, which now has tighter control over the semi-autonomous city.
In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party's chief of staff for Hong Kong, Xia Baolong, visited Hong Kong and called on the government to resolve the “deep-seated problems” of housing and abolish cage houses and SDUs by 2049. In response, the Hong Kong government launched an exploratory policy. The task force was established in 2023 and finally announced new reforms in October.
The measure sets a minimum floor area of 8 square meters for SDUs, requires a separate toilet, at least one suitable window, and the absence of fire hazards. From the second half of 2026, all units will be required to be registered and undergo periodic inspections, and their name will be changed to “basic housing units.”
But critics said the new standard was only one square meter wider than Hong Kong's average prison cell, and would not increase the number of rooms that house couples or entire families. An estimated 50,000 children live in SDU. It is estimated that approximately one-third of all SDUs are currently substandard and in need of refurbishment.
The Housing Authority told the Guardian it was “unworkable” to force private rental housing based on the number of people living in a room.
“Additionally, there is feedback in the community that some single-family SDU households do not want to set minimum square footage requirements too high to save on rental costs,” the spokesperson said.
“The landlord has nothing to do with it.”
In another Mongkok building, Se checks on an elderly man who is preparing to move out of SDU because the ceiling keeps collapsing. He shows off the empty room he's moving into and says Lai Shang meets his new standards. Like his current room, he has his own toilet and kitchen, both sharing the same cubicle.
The new regulations do not cover coffins and cage homes. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said the city was already regulated by certain ordinances, but critics said the 30-year-old regulation requiring landlords to register buildings with more than 12 bed spaces was too simple. It is argued that this can be avoided. “The government said it wanted to get rid of 'low-quality' condominiums, but the worst are coffin houses,” housing activist Kenny Ng told the Hong Kong Free Press.
The Housing Authority said it would “step up” enforcement of cage home laws.
Mr Cize claims that the house visited by the Guardian is currently not registered. “[Landlords] I don’t care how many people live inside,” she says.
There are also concerns about how the improvements will affect prices. “If we improve quality, rents will go up,” Michael Tian, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council who has previously advocated for rental caps, told reporters. Rent for a coffin house, which is the size of a single bed, can be as much as HK$3,000 (approximately 31,000 yen) per month.
Cize said creating a single standard for all housing would eliminate coffin and cage homes, “but if the government doesn't have enough social housing or a proper rehousing policy, “That's going to be a problem,” he said, adding it could force people into the streets or indoors. Illegal SDU. The only thing that can address the problem, she says, is “to develop more land and build more public housing.”
hong kong government say 308,000 new public housing units will be needed. The new reforms include a commitment to build 43,600 social housing apartments as part of a goal to increase the current stock, including temporary housing, to around 190,000 by 2030. The waiting list is currently more than five years long and has about 200,000 applicants.
The government points out that 60% of SDU residents are eligible for social housing and says no one will be left without a roof over their head. But they also said Tenants who lose their apartments under the new regulations will not be given priority over other tenants. “[Prioritising them] It will encourage people to move into the worst subdivided units in the hope that they will be phased out,” Housing Secretary Winnie Ho said. According to Hong Kong Free Press.
Few residents interviewed by the Guardian were optimistic.
“The government says so, but we can't actually do it,” says Coco, who has lived in SDU for 24 years.
“They want to renovate a few of these houses and get windows; [the landlords] You can't do it because it costs money…and even if you have money, it's impossible. I think there are some things they can't achieve. ”
