Prologue Journal

The infamous ‘coffin homes’ that Hong Kong’s new housing reforms won’t touch

• prologu5
• 10/20/202410/20/2024

Hong Kong Free Press

60-year-old cleaner Kei pays HK$2,200 for a bedbug-infested partition measuring some 20 square feet in a Mong Kok flat shared with 14 other tenants. He makes about HK$500 a day as a janitor, about the same amount he spends monthly on his cross-harbour commute.

Kei’s bedspace is known colloquially as a “coffin home” – a space that fits little more than a single bed and some personal items. He faces up to a decade-long wait for a subsidised rental flat, given that he is a single applicant without children or elderly dependents.

He was worried that he will have to move out and look for another more expensive place to live after the government set out minimum living standards to phase out “low-quality” homes. But the government also announced that his type of dwelling was here to stay.

Chief Executive John Lee on Wednesday announced new regulations requiring subdivided units to measure at least eight square metres in floorspace, and also include windows and an individual toilet, a year after he laid out the plan during last year’s address.

On a 2021 visit to Hong Kong, Beijing’s top official on Hong Kong affairs Xia Baolong said he hoped the city would eradicate its infamous sub-divided flats and cage homes by 2049, echoing Beijing’s characterisation of Hong Kong’s housing crisis as a “deep-rooted problem.”

Hong Kong had 108,200 sub-divided units in 2021, with some 215,700 people living in such dwellings, according to official data. Under the new legislation, about a third of those units are estimated to be substandard.

Citing varying conditions, Lee said it was necessary to set “minimum standards” for those units.

But being able to stay in the bedspace was preferable to eviction, with nowhere else to go and no resettlement arrangements, Kei told HKFP after Wednesday’s announcement. “It is what it is. I didn’t have high expectations anyway,” he said.

‘Coffin homes’

Hong Kong’s notorious “coffin homes” have long attracted the international media spotlight as a symbol of the city’s failed housing policies.

75-year-old widow Au has always wanted a puppy. But where she lives, there is barely enough room even for herself, let alone a pet.

With a rental allowance from the government, she pays HK$2,500 every month for a space measuring some 25 square feet that fits her bed, a small folding table, and a minifridge. At almost HK$100 per square foot, coffin home rents are among the highest in the city.

Compared to the dozens of other tenants living in the same Mong Kok apartment, Au is lucky enough to live in a space with an air conditioner, which offers some respite from Hong Kong’s oppressive summer heat.

One tenant, Wong, has a room to himself measuring some 50 square feet. He said he found it hypocritical that bedspaces would still be legal while his unit may be considered substandard: “If this place isn’t up to par, then what about the coffin homes?”

Bedspaces are regulated by a dedicated piece of legislation, the Bedspaces Apartments Ordinance, which effectively legalised cage homes and coffin homes three decades ago.

The law required owners of those flats to license operations for 12 or more bedspaces, but landlords have been circumventing the regulation since the law was passed in 1994 by operating 11 sleeping spaces instead.

In its submission to the government task force, local anti-poverty NGO, the Society for Community Organization (SoCO), called on the authorities to register all sub-divided units, including bedspaces and cubicle homes.

In effect, that would mean a complete ban on cage homes, coffin homes and the like, alongside a phased ban on substandard sub-divided units. Accordingly, the Bedspace Apartments Ordinance should be repealed, SoCO said.

But government sources on Wednesday said that coffin homes will not fall under the remit of the new legislation, and will instead continue to be regulated by the bedspaces ordinance.

While civil society organisations including SoCO and other concern groups typically consider coffin homes to be a type of inadequate housing, the Hong Kong government excludes the tiny bedspaces from their definition of what constitutes a sub-divided flat.

Grassroots housing activist Kenny Ng of the Kwai Chung Subdivided Flat Residents Alliance said it was the coffin homes and cubicle homes that were the worst living spaces in the city. “The government said it wanted to get rid of ‘low-quality’ sub-divided units, but it’s coffin homes that are the worst,” he said.

Resettlement plans

Sammy Hui may have to move out of a sub-divided unit in Tai Kok Tsui measuring around 60 square feet. About a year ago, he was renting a 400-square-foot flat in Lam Tin, before the landlord took back the flat for his son. Every month, Hui makes a few thousand dollars in commission off stock trades.

Lai Kin-kwok of the Concerning Grassroot Housing Rights Alliance said he was concerned how the government will relocate tenants without the same financial means as Hui — if at all.

Transitional housing and light public housing units – the city’s new temporary housing solutions – are usually reserved for those who have been on the waiting list for public housing for more than three years, with priority given to family applicants.

Housing minister Winnie Ho said last month that the authorities will be able to relax the requirements for those who had not been in the queue for the stipulated three years, allowing more working class residents to move into transitional housing.

But around 40 per cent of sub-divided unit tenants are not eligible to apply for public housing, while 20 per cent choose not to, according to official figures.

Deputy Financial Secretary Michael Wong, who heads the government task force on sub-divided units, said on Thursday that the overall supply of sub-divided units would not see a “drastic” decrease after the renovations. Those who are not in the queue for public housing would have the option to live in sub-divided units that are up to the legal standard, he added.

Wong said landlords would still be incentivised to make repairs, as there was a stronger profit incentive to operate sub-divided units instead of leasing an entire flat, maintaining the supply of sub-divided units.

But veteran housing activist Lai remains concerned that enlarging units would inevitably mean some tenants will be driven out, adding that it was “disappointing” that the government had not mentioned resettlement arrangements.

Ng of the Kwai Chung concern group told HKFP that the government needed to implement an arrangement for those who were not queueing for public housing. The government was too idealistic, Ng said, adding that he believed public housing units could not be built in time to rehouse those who are displaced.

Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong’s (CityU) Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences Chan Siu-ming said most tenants at substandard units would have to move out while landlords make repairs — a process that could take months.

Landlords could even leverage the bedspaces ordinance to convert their sub-divided units into bedspace apartments, Chan said. Comprehensive resettlement measures will be needed to ensure elderly singletons do not move into coffin homes or capsules en masse, he added.

SoCO’s Deputy Director Sze Lai-shan said discretionary resettlement measures were needed, especially for marginal cases such as “double-not” migrant families and elderly tenants who qualified for public housing but had lost the documents needed for application.

“The worst case scenario is that tenants will have to leave the sub-divided units and become homeless or move into coffin homes, which won’t be deemed illegal by the new rules,” Sze said. She added that SoCO would continue pushing for rent caps and subsidies to cover potential rent hikes.

Advocacy groups have also called for a stronger inspection regime, as landlords could not be relied on to report their own substandard units, while tenants are not willing to report their landlords due to fear of reprisals or even eviction.

Rent controls

Concern groups now fear that landlords will impose exorbitant rent hikes in an attempt to recoup costs from renovating sub-par sub-divided units. Some believe rent controls could help prevent that.

Amendments to the Landlord and Tenant (Consolidation) Ordinance took effect in January 2022, banning increases within the first two-year lease and placing a 10 per cent cap on rent hikes. The legislature passed the law to protect the city’s poorest from predatory rent charging practices, but the law includes no limits on the starting rent.

Then-housing minister Frank Chan in 2021 said that an initial rent cap was not practicable as the government did not have sufficient data on the rents charged by owners of different sizes of sub-divided units. Chief Executive Lee on Thursday echoed those remarks, saying that it would be hard to set a rent cap that accounts for the variance in sub-divided units.

Lawmaker Michael Tien said he would raise the matter of an initial rent cap at the Legislative Council when the government submits its proposals. The issue of rent controls was “tricky,” said the veteran lawmaker, who in 2021 called for a cap on initial rents for sub-divided housing.

“When they upgrade the quality, the rents will go up,” Tien told reporters at LegCo on Wednesday, noting that Lee did not mention rent controls in his speech.

In its response to the policy announcement, the Concerning Subdivided Units Alliance said the government could impose limits by capping the maximum rent that landlords could charge at 150 per cent of the flat’s market rent.

For sub-divided units in a 1,200 square-foot flat with a rental value of HK$36,000, the maximum rental cost for each square foot should be capped at HK$37.5, or around HK$3,225 for a unit of the proposed minimum eight square metres.

Some tenants are being charged up to four times the average rental value of their unit, said veteran social worker Sze: “It’s even worse in coffin homes. It’s about eight or nine times… The government has a mission to [legislate initial rent caps] but they still haven’t done it.”

CityU’s Chan said he expected the supply of units to drop, which could be another factor causing rents to rise: “Let’s say a tenant rents a unit with a third of their income. If they have to move out and find another flat, they might have to spend up to half of what they make on rent.”

Elderly tenants relying on government aid to rent sub-divided units for prices around the HK$2,500 mark would not be able to afford rents above that if they did not have savings, Chan added.

Single persons are eligible to claim the maximum rent allowance of HK$2,515 under the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance scheme, though they will have to pay the difference themselves if the rent charged is above that figure.

Chan also said that the new regulation could act as ground zero for phasing out sub-divided housing. The government could review the standards again a year later, taking into account the supply of resettlement facilities, he said.

But that does not necessarily mean sub-divided housing would eventually be eradicated completely, Chan said, as some sub-divided units could be considered large enough. Meanwhile, other groups, including housing activist Ng’s, believe that the city should aim at phasing out inadequate housing across the board.

“But it’s a long-term pipe dream, like wishing for world peace,” Ng said.

Support HKFP  |  Policies & Ethics  |  Error/typo?  |  Contact Us  |  Newsletter  | Transparency & Annual Report | Apps

Help safeguard press freedom & keep HKFP free for all readers by supporting our team

https://hongkongfp.com/2024/10/20/the-infamous-coffin-homes-that-hong-kongs-new-housing-reforms-wont-touch/