Tiny homes face the axe in Hong Kong, leaving many families worried

As she surveyed her home in Hong Kong, Liu Lanhua tried not to be bothered that her narrow kitchen doubled as the family’s only bathroom.

Colanders, pans and hairbrushes dangled above the toilet.

Jars of chili oil were precariously balanced on water pipes.

A stew of chicken wings and chestnuts warmed on an electric stove a few feet from the shower faucet.

She and her 12-year-old daughter are among 220,000 people in Hong Kong living in subdivided homes, which have long been among the starkest examples of the city’s vast income inequality.

Now her home is under threat. Hong Kong’s leader John Lee last month announced that the city would impose minimum standards on the size and fixtures of such apartments.

The policy is expected to phase out more than 30,000 of the smallest subdivided homes.

In Liu’s home, there was no space for a sink; the only spot for two pet turtles was in a basin under the fridge.

“If we had money, these would be in separate rooms,” she said, looking at the cluttered kitchen and toilet.

Beijing has urged the Hong Kong government to get rid of subdivided units and other tiny homes by 2049, because it regards the city’s housing shortage as one cause of the anti-government unrest of 2019.

But Lee’s plan has raised concerns among experts and advocates of more public housing, who say it would raise already high rents for the poor and evict a number of people without clear plans for their resettlement.

It also does not address the worst types of housing in the city: rental bed spaces so small they are known as coffin, or cage, homes.

Hong Kong’s subdivided homes, created when apartments are carved into two or more units, are usually in old tenement buildings in densely packed, working-class neighbourhoods.

Despite their often dilapidated conditions, the units are in high demand because affordable housing is in short supply.

Hong Kong has among the world’s most expensive homes, and highest rents.

The average living space per person is 64.6 square feet – less than half the size of a New York City parking space.

Owners of tenement apartments partition the units into smaller ones to rent them to more people.

Ref: Tiny homes face the axe in Hong Kong, leaving many families worried (businesstimes)