Hong Kong’s substandard subdivided flats are ‘targeted for eradication’… and their occupants?
Hong Kong Free Press
The government has put out some details about its plan to eliminate substandard mini-flats. But a question remains.
According to a newspaper contribution by the relevant minister, there are believed to be 110,000 subdivided flats – where an already miniature flat is further split up for multiple occupation – in Hong Kong.
It is estimated that 220,000 people live in them. This is a suspiciously round number. It appears that it is the consequence of a finding (wild guess?) that the number of people living in each tiny flatlet is on average two.
No doubt this is a difficult area and two seems a plausible number for a very small space. On the other hand, before the public housing system really got under way there were similar estimates for the number of people per squatter hut. And they turned out to be much too low.
Never mind. Let us go along with the official numbers. There are 110,000 mini-flats accommodating 220,000 people. It is further supposed that about 80,000 of these little homes will be able, with some work, to conform to official standards in the matter of space, windows, plumbing and such like.
The other 30,000 or so will, in the housing secretary’s rather chilling phrase, be “targeted for eradication.” She supposes that this will leave 77,000 units still on the market after mandated improvements.
This also seems a bit optimistic. If you are the owner of a subdivided flat facing a large bill to bring your sub-units up to official standards, there are alternatives. One obvious one is to dismantle the subdivisions and sell or rent the flat in its original intended form. Or you can unload the whole arrangement to some hardened criminal who will regard the remote possibility of a large fine with equanimity.
Still, again, let us go along with the official figures. We now come to the unanswered question. There are 30,000 flats to be “eradicated.” They will be home to 60,000 people. Where are all these people supposed to go?
We have already been told that they will not be going to public housing, unless they arrive at the front of the queue just in time. Officials are apparently worried that there may be a rush to occupy really squalid spaces in the hope that inhabitants will be wafted swiftly into public housing.
Well, whatever the merits of that theory, only 40 percent of mini-flat dwellers have even applied for public housing. So we have 36,000 people for whom the government apparently has no plans at all.
There is an ironic history here. During the 1980s and 90s the government took a great pride in the number of overseas housing people who came to Hong Kong to look at local public housing efforts and learn from them.
But the big attraction was not the multi-storey tower blocks which were then growing like mushrooms all over the New Territories. Lots of places had experimented with public housing in tower blocks, with mixed results.
The big attraction was an innovation called a Temporary Housing Area. The idea behind these places was that the government provided a floor and roof for a single-storey structure and the occupants put in the walls. Water, showers and toilets were provided centrally and residents cooked on bottled gas.
This was an outstandingly cheap solution and had obvious attractions for places which had more space than we do. Hong Kong being Hong Kong, there were recurring reports of local bandits monopolising the wall-building, but apart from that the only drawback was that the area was always only temporarily available. The government had other plans for it, usually, and not always for housing.
This was nobody’s idea of paradise but it met a need. The nearest thing to it now seems to be what officials call “transitional housing.” It is usually run by NGOs, apparently. However, only 3,000 units are currently under construction so those 36,000 people will have to wait.
I am sure the government’s intentions in sorting out the subdivided flat situation are good. It would be nice, though, if the people running housing policy tried harder to look as if they recognised that the occupants are people, whose happiness is the objective of the exercise.
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