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HONG KONG: When Lau Kai Fai, his wife, and their teenage son moved into a new apartment in Hong Kong last month, he thought the 290 square feet of space in his “modular home” felt like “winning the lottery.”
Among the first Hong Kong residents to move into these manufactured homes, built as a transition for people hoping for public housing, Lau’s family more than tripled the space they had squeezed into. Now they sit together to eat, instead of taking turns.
While small by the standards of many cities in rich countries, the new home represents a big step forward, albeit a temporary one, for Lau, 70, in one of the most populous urban areas in the world.
Lau Kai Fai, 70, sits inside his new home with his wife in Shek Kip Mei in Hong Kong on September 14, 2020 (Photo: REUTERS / Tyrone Siu).
“It feels like home,” Lau said. “The previous floor was just a place to sleep.”
Lau is the beneficiary of Hong Kong’s latest initiative to alleviate the housing shortage, where more than 200,000 people living in subdivided flats wait an average of 5.5 years to obtain public housing.
The transitional homes are built on vacant land leased by the government or private developers for only a few years, although the prefab modules can be moved and reused.
The 2018 plan only scratches the surface of the needs of one of the world’s most unequal cities: more than 1 million of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people live in poverty. As of June, 800 transitional homes had been built out of the 15,000 planned for the next three years.
READ: Too many Hong Kong residents want affordable housing, but there are too few apartments.
But for the Lau family, the apartment in a four-story building in one of the oldest and poorest districts in downtown Kowloon is a luxury.
HOMEWORK AT THE DESK, NOT ON THE BED
His previous apartment, one of many in Hong Kong dubbed “coffin houses,” had cost around HK $ 5,000 (US $ 650) a month to rent. Now the family pays HK $ 3,000, 25% of the income of Lau’s retired wife Tian Jiayu, the breadwinner who works in a supermarket.
They finally have a place where your child does his homework at a desk instead of in bed.
At Shek Kip Mei in Hong Kong on September 14, 2020, a newly constructed four-story “modular house” building made of pre-fab pieces is seen. (Photo: REUTERS / Tyrone Siu)
The door of the white container-shaped apartment opens onto a bunk bed. A closet separates the bed from the living room, where a swivel chair folds over for computer work and eating. Twelve steps from the entrance, at the end of the floor, is the mini-kitchen with refrigerator, stove and washing machine.
The move expanded the family’s floor space from 80 square feet to 290 square feet. They now live in two-thirds of the average home area in busy Hong Kong, at 430 square feet, half the size of the average home in London.
In Tokyo, another crowded Asian capital, the average home is 710 square feet, though about 1.4 million people live in spaces 210 square feet or less, according to government figures.
Tian is happier with the gas stove mini-kitchen upgrade.
Lau Kai Fai, 70, cleans his new home with his wife in Shek Kip Mei in Hong Kong on September 14, 2020 (Photo: REUTERS / Tyrone Siu)
The land for Nan Cheong 2020, the city’s first modular housing project, was leased by developer Henderson Land for HK $ 1 a month. The project was built by the Hong Kong Social Service Council.
It was built from container-like blocks for just 40 percent of the cost of building a public rental home, said Anthony Wong, commercial director for the nonprofit organization.
READ: Out of reach? Unaffordable housing fuels Hong Kong protests
Lack of land and money is a challenge to build more transitional housing. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) say the government is not doing enough. Hong Kong CEO Carrie Lam is under pressure for housing solutions, including underpinning the transitional housing scheme.
“The problem is that the government is acting as an intermediary rather than taking responsibility for developing it. They are relying on NGOs and developers to do that,” said Sze Lai Shan, community organizer with the Society for Community Organizing.
A spokesperson for the Office of Transportation and Housing told Reuters that the government launched a HK $ 5 billion funding plan in June to support NGO transitional housing projects, which can come in many different arrangements and ideas.
An interior view of a flat with no elevator that has been subdivided into six cubicles in the New Territories of Hong Kong. (File Photo: AFP / Anthony Wallace)
“We hope … to allow different community groups to use their creativity as much as possible to provide diversified transitional housing projects,” he said by email, adding that the government is facilitating short-term and long-term policies to increase the supply of housing, to address the housing problems faced by low-income families. “
Lau’s Nan Cheong 2020 lifeline is two years.
“We hope to have a public floor by then, if not, there is nothing we can do,” he said. “We will have to find a subdivided apartment again.”
