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Vincent Yu / AP
62-year-old Cheng Man Wai lies in the 16 square foot cage that he calls home, in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013.
By Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press
Vincent Yu / AP
A car passes luxury houses on Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's most exclusive neighborhood, on Feb. 7, 2013.
Published at 10:27 a.m. ET: For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.
The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.
Vincent Yu / AP
77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu sits inside his cage home on Jan. 25, 2013.
Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks.
Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis. Read the full story.
Vincent Yu / AP
63-year-old Lee Tat-fong walks in a corridor while her two grandchildren -- Amy, 9, and Steven, 13 -- sit in their 50-square-foot room in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013. Lee, like many poor residents, has applied for public housing but faces years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.
Vincent Yu / AP
77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu eats next to his cage on Jan. 25, 2013. The cage homes date from the 1950s, when they catered mostly to single men coming in from mainland China
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Some poor residents in Hong Kong have been forced to live in small cages. Around 100,000 people in the city live in inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization. NBCNews.com's Alex Witt reports.
Leave a Comment:
"dispite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage"...We as a World community need too start given young families cash incentives to only have two children? It might take 50 years too see the results, but the quality of life for future generations would surely rise?
I concur chimp! you are pretty smart for a smelly old pa-pang-ah-tang!
Be realistic Chimp.
You monkeys don't know what you are talking about...How would our GOD(corporate interests) survive without the MAXIMUM amount of con-sumers? We would all lose our jobs, then we would not be able too buy our kids the G.I Joe with the kung-fu grip for Christmas....the wife would then leave us for not giving little Billy said G.I Joe for Christmas...We Need All the Consumers we can get!
I hope no one reads this page...they would find out what a chimpy chump I really am! bye bye
Cash incentive? starting with you, how much will you shell out /mo? & you are already paying tax for social services/infrastructure.
100k out of the population of 7mil = ~1.4% <--- not a big deal, and it takes time to improve, AND IT IS improving.
The media should also highlight the problem Hong Kong citizens are facing, that a huge influx of people from mainland "hijack" the medical services and putting enormous stress on the system, making the citizens to pay for it with time or tax, one way or the other.
That's it Chimp, spend wisely. Don't spend what you don't have or you 'll be like the US budget, year & year of deficits. The country can't go bankrupt, YOU can.
Thanks for rainin on my parade 'ton of not very fun'...The truth is(my truth anyways) NON forced population reduction is common sense, and you can throw all kind of bean counter number's out, but in the long run paying people in...Say Africa/Asia/USA/Mexico, too only have two children is going too pay for itself in the future. It's like doing preventive maintanance on your house or car so you don't have a HUGE repair cost in the future. As for people "Hijacking' medical care...I wonder if YOU would go too another country if you or a family member were sick to get medical care? I bet YOU would "hijack" anything and everything too save you or a loved one...Empathy...Grow some! in u.
The Irony is doing preventive maintenance should be a conservitive thought process(thinking of the long term!) But what has replaced long term conservitive thought process is mine mine mine GREED! Can't tell you how many people I know that mommy and daddy left them a few bucks and these formerly centered/liberal thinker's turn into greedy republicans, this after they have reaped the benifits of "socialism" (public schools, police and fire dept...etc.) I just watch my dogs and see the same 'base' animal behavior that money does too SOME people, makes me want too puke!
I'd rather live in the cage than on the sidewalk. Those people living in the cages also get ample welfare benefits & can also go back to the mainland to live with the families, but would lose face for leaving Hong Kong. My sister-in-law and family lives in a place like the grandmother w/2 grandchildren, but does it to save money; she owns a 2 bath 3 bedroom condo on the mainland in a gated community. Sometimes what you see isn't the full story.
i live in mainland china and agree with your comment. they don't live in a cage. they sleep there and the cage protects there stuff. glad i don't have to live that way, but i am sure some do it by chioce. the chinese are tight!
though it looks horrible but let's face it, it's better to have a cage to sleep in than being in the sidewalk where you don't own anything and accessible restrooms to use.
"Inadequate housing"? That's the best misnomer I've heard in awhile.
The cage is simply the HK version of a tiny house. With this in mind, I know I'll be living large in my 192 sq ft cabin on 35 acres. I'll call the abode: Tiny Mansion.
Didn't I just read a headline talking about New York realtors selling micro apartments for big bucks? Pictures of those were really not that much better - a couple hundred sq ft etc. We're headed in that direction and we think it's chic - well the realtors in their nice places don't, but we gullible middle class sheep do. Don't you get it? The corporate world wants themselves and slaves that live in slave quarters. Some of the world is closer to this than us, but we Americans will gradually accept a poorer and poorer standard of living until no one believes that even many poor Americans lived in conditions better than these Chinese up until the mid 2000's. We'll say, "It's always been this way" when we're living in metal cages.
I agree SM...The downward spiral. But we still have the "Twilight" movie sequel too look forward too...I'm off too fiddle!
But in these unpredictable and uncertain economic situations when many people are becoming homeless, it's better to sleep in cage or microapartment but at least safe, covered and somewhere warm instead of sleeping in the streets, park bench or under the bridge.
Guess where they get the money to pay the rent on their cages? They work in factories for companies that make goods that Americans buy at Walmart. If we didn't buy all the cheap crap they make, the people would stay in the villages where they would actually raise their own kids and grow fresh food. The lure of factory jobs has created the horrible conditions they live in with people only seeing their children once or twice a year.
Hi sandy. I was replying too silent majority and your post was in the 'waiting room' so I thought I would reply. I looked around my house the other day, and 90+% of the "stuff" is made in China. Every last piece of it made too break and be desposed of in our already overflowing landfills....these times we are living in are an "idiocracy", and I am a part of it(sad but true.)
It is misleading to read one side of the story.
Poorer elderlies in Hong Kong receieve government "fruit money" (pension) of HK$2300 a month (US$300) and travelling by public transport much subsidized (US25 cents for each ride). All Hong Kong citizen, elderlies included, receive virtually free medical treatment at public hospitals.
Since land is scare with a total population well in excess of 7 million, living space per head is low where it is not uncommon a family of four cramp in a tiny apartment. Many people living alone rent a bunk space for cost saving. The wiremesh surrounding the bunk space provides security akin to the wall of a house.
Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest city with per capita income ahead of US and most of the European countries. But it is also one of the most expensive places to live with real estate prices average US$1100 per square foot. For instance a tiny apartment of 900 sq. ft costs a wooping US$1 million.
Most people on the lower income live in government housing estates and pay a minimum monthly rental. Homeless people living on sidewalk is a rarity in Hong Kong.
HK starting to look like Kowloon Walled City again... WIKIPEDIA THAT STUFF! It's insane!