Life Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles

[Kunal Biswas]

Life Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles

An estimated 200,000 Hong Kong residents live in inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organisation

.

"Cage homes" are minuscule rooms, occupied by the poorest people in the city.

The tenants differ in age and gender, but all are unable to afford a small cubicle, which would allow more room to stand up.

Hong Kong's glitter conceals the 200,000 people shut out from the city's social improvements.

These photographs were taken for SoCO, an NGO fighting for policy changes and decent living standards in the city.

Residents are forced to be creative when storing things in their limited space.

Ah Tin lives in a 12-square-foot bed, closed in by rows and rows of wires. Sorrow has destroyed his appetite, and he rarely eats.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Life Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles

Mr. Leung is one of the few cage dwellers who reads extensively. He’s held down a variety of temporary jobs in his life. However, he’s now too old to get a job and so spends his time reading, escaping from the world of misery and poverty that surrounds him.

"I’m still alive, and yet I am already surrounded by four coffin planks!" says one of Hong Kong’s cage home tenants.

These impoverished residents have few alternatives to living in such intensely cramped spaces.

A 400-square-foot flat can be subdivided to accommodate nearly 20 double-decker sealed bed spaces.

Many cage home residents awake to the cruel reality that all the shimmer and prosperity of Hong Kong is out of reach.

Over the last 10 years, the number of cage homes made of wire mesh has decreased, but they’ve been replaced by beds sealed with wooden planks.

Close proximity in these sub-divided units makes privacy and sound sleep a luxury.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Life Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles

Aged over 60, Mr. Wong still has a full head of black hair. In order to pay his expensive rent, he works in construction sites every day. In his leisure time, he volunteers to help homeless people.

These sub-divided units are actually illegal in Hong Kong.

These members of the Li Chong family—a father and son—are Japanese. Both very tall, they find it hard to move around in the tiny cubicle.

This 50-square-foot cubicle is a multi-function space for the Leung family: it’s their sleeping room, dinning room, and kitchen.

Organizations like the Society for Community Organization (SoCO) are helping to combat these horrible living conditions.

A kitchen-toilet complex in a cage home.

People in Hong Kong struggle to acquire even small and simple homes for themselves.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Hong Kong has long been known for its prosperity, yet beneath its glitzy appearance lies a world of squatter huts and cage homes.

“That day, I came home and cried,” said Benny Lam when describing an experience photographing grim living conditions in Hong Kong.

After four years of visiting over 100 sub-divided flats in the city’s old district, Lam was accustomed to the wood-planked 15-square foot homes known as coffin cubicles. While photographing a cubicle that was slightly larger than usual, Lam blurted to the tenant, “You have a big coffin home!”

“I felt so bad,” Lam remembers, “Living like that should never be normal. I had become numb.”

Source : http://www.nationalgeographic.com/p.../?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_c

 

[KumarG]

Their expensive condos are not much better in terms of space. The whole place is stacked with concrete, and a bit claustrophobia-inducing.

Thankful to be born where I was - have long believed that hell is not a different place, but right here as a different life.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Published on Feb 17, 2014
54-year-old Yeung Suen is one of Hong Kong's 100,000 cubicle dwellers. He lives in a 35 square foot windowless space barely bigger than his bed. The irony is, he pays more per square foot in rent than someone living in a luxury apartment. In this episode, Get Real enters Hong Kong's world of cubicle dwellers, and asks if living in a cubicle is their only option.