Living in 15 sq ft: Inside Hong Kong’s coffin homes

[gambit]

My previous house was 1500 sq ft up and 1500 sq ft basement. Total 3000 sq ft living space. Down in the basement I have a 'theater room' complete with 7.2 surround sound and this room was also my home library with built-in bookcases. The house also has a 2.5 SUV garage with attached shop room with 240v outlets. The backyard is large enough to have a paved RV parking and a storage shed. In the middle of the backyard, I made a BBQ fire pit large enough to handle winter. I can enjoy morning coffee in backyard with mountain view.

And yet the PDF Chinese brigade boasts that these pathetic HK apartment buildings are more worthwhile owning/living because each is worth at least one million dollars.

 

[Song Hong]

My previous house was 1500 sq ft up and 1500 sq ft basement. Total 3000 sq ft living space. Down in the basement I have a 'theater room' complete with 7.2 surround sound and this room was also my home library with built-in bookcases. The house also has a 2.5 SUV garage with attached shop room with 240v outlets. The backyard is large enough to have a paved RV parking and a storage shed. In the middle of the backyard, I made a BBQ fire pit large enough to handle winter. I can enjoy morning coffee in backyard with mountain view.

And yet the PDF Chinese brigade boasts that these pathetic HK apartment buildings are more worthwhile owning/living because each is worth at least one million dollars.

There are housing cartel leaching people in US as well, especially California silicon valley.

 

[gambit]

There are housing cartel leaching people in US as well, especially California silicon valley.

My point is that people, notably the PDF Chinese brigade, places market value over actual living conditions. Not just HK, but also Beijing, Shanghai, and other prosperous Chinese cities. As long as the market value is higher than the average American house, that is all that is needed to boast that the Chinese apartment owner is 'wealthier' than his American HOUSE owner. Wealthy in market value but poor in lifestyle.

 

[SQ8]

My point is that people, notably the PDF Chinese brigade, places market value over actual living conditions. Not just HK, but also Beijing, Shanghai, and other prosperous Chinese cities. As long as the market value is higher than the average American house, that is all that is needed to boast that the Chinese apartment owner is 'wealthier' than his American HOUSE owner. Wealthy in market value but poor in lifestyle.

There is an exodus from NYC for this same reason, but it’s taken as a negative showing signs of inflation and not some propaganda piece to show off how wealthy the US is.
People leaving NYC because they can no longer afford it isn’t paraded as some “wealth” of NYC but rather why the city policies and real estate manipulation has led to it.
The key difference between China and the US isnt wealth or innovation or whatever they want to tout. Its that cultural ability in Americans to know/hear a problem, highlight it and at the least talk about a solution- all without the fear of someone picking us up in the middle of the night because we offended the party.

 

[gambit]

There is an exodus from NYC for this same reason, but it’s taken as a negative showing signs of inflation and not some propaganda piece to show off how wealthy the US is.
People leaving NYC because they can no longer afford it isn’t paraded as some “wealth” of NYC but rather why the city policies and real estate manipulation has led to it.
The key difference between China and the US isnt wealth or innovation or whatever they want to tout. Its that cultural ability in Americans to know/hear a problem, highlight it and at the least talk about a solution- all without the fear of someone picking us up in the middle of the night because we offended the party.

I can understand NYC. When you think about it, NYC is among the oldest cities in the US going back almost 400 yrs, so if there are development and/or housing issues, I sympathize with NYC-ers.

I never been to NYC but only passing thru. But that was enough to make me place lifestyle as highest priority rather than accumulating market value anywhere, be it downtown or suburb.

What homes look like in the world's most expensive city | loveproperty.com

Hong Kong has the smallest average house size in the world and yet is also one of the most expensive cities in the world. As a result, its residents are coming up with ingenious housing solutions...

www.loveproperty.com

The home lifestyle that I described of my previous house would be worth $360 mils in HK. But I bought that house for $175K, then improved it some. Of those Chinese who owns HK/Beijing/Shanghai apartments worth in the millions, how many of them experienced the joys of feeling the grass on their bare feet? Or having the neighbors over in the backyard for beers and BBQ? Or seeing fireflys in the summer evenings?

But hey...The apartment is worth $1 million dollars and that is all that matters.

 

[SQ8]

I can understand NYC. When you think about it, NYC is among the oldest cities in the US going back almost 400 yrs, so if there are development and/or housing issues, I sympathize with NYC-ers.

I never been to NYC but only passing thru. But that was enough to make me place lifestyle as highest priority rather than accumulating market value anywhere, be it downtown or suburb.

What homes look like in the world's most expensive city | loveproperty.com

Hong Kong has the smallest average house size in the world and yet is also one of the most expensive cities in the world. As a result, its residents are coming up with ingenious housing solutions...

www.loveproperty.com

The home lifestyle that I described of my previous house would be worth $360 mils in HK. But I bought that house for $175K, then improved it some. Of those Chinese who owns HK/Beijing/Shanghai apartments worth in the millions, how many of them experienced the joys of feeling the grass on their bare feet? Or having the neighbors over in the backyard for beers and BBQ? Or seeing fireflys in the summer evenings?

But hey...The apartment is worth $1 million dollars and that is all that matters.

I think it’s all about lifestyle preference. Colorado may be more expensive than Texas but being able to drive 30 minutes and be in the rockies is what I like along with the generally golden weather. The NYC residents may have a job there so no other choice than to live there so they can still keep a living. Other who live there wont leave manhattan because that city life of eating out, bars and all is what they prefer - and then its fine if they want to pay $5000 a month for a 600sq ft space. The same may he true for HK residents - but at least that NYC resident that has to live there out of employment or otherwise at least can complain without being told they are ruining the image of NYC.

 

[gambit]

I think it’s all about lifestyle preference. Colorado may be more expensive than Texas but being able to drive 30 minutes and be in the rockies is what I like along with the generally golden weather. The NYC residents may have a job there so no other choice than to live there so they can still keep a living. Other who live there wont leave manhattan because that city life of eating out, bars and all is what they prefer - and then its fine if they want to pay $5000 a month for a 600sq ft space. The same may he true for HK residents - but at least that NYC resident that has to live there out of employment or otherwise at least can complain without being told they are ruining the image of NYC.

When I was younger, I was a city boy. Back in Hawai'i, I would go surfing and hanging out at the beaches all day, then having a good night in various hot spots in Honolulu. So no, I do not fault anyone for choosing the city life. Admittedly, I still misses some of that today.

Prior to the USAF, I have never been to the mainland, so when I had the chance to explore CONUS, after I turned 40-something, I prefers the openness of the Western states. Apartment living became less and less attractive no matter how fanciful the building. Riding my bike around the city is nice, but steady state cruising and seeing nature became more preferable. It is not so much being anti-social but more like asking for some spaces for oneself, and that want is most reflective in the home. Having just a few square yards of separation between people is a major psychological effect. As a side note, growing up in Hawai'i, I spent so much time in the waters and was tanned enough that people thought I was black, now my skin tone is much lighter and am pretty much a landlubber.

 

[SQ8]

When I was younger, I was a city boy. Back in Hawai'i, I would go surfing and hanging out at the beaches all day, then having a good night in various hot spots in Honolulu. So no, I do not fault anyone for choosing the city life. Admittedly, I still misses some of that today.

Prior to the USAF, I have never been to the mainland, so when I had the chance to explore CONUS, after I turned 40-something, I prefers the openness of the Western states. Apartment living became less and less attractive no matter how fanciful the building. Riding my bike around the city is nice, but steady state cruising and seeing nature became more preferable. It is not so much being anti-social but more like asking for some spaces for oneself, and that want is most reflective in the home. Having just a few square yards of separation between people is a major psychological effect. As a side note, growing up in Hawai'i, I spent so much time in the waters and was tanned enough that people thought I was black, now my skin tone is much lighter and am pretty much a landlubber.

Having a baby is pushing me out of the apartment life and into suburbia as well. Even if you don’t need the space the tiny humans do.. by a lot more

 

[Song Hong]

My point is that people, notably the PDF Chinese brigade, places market value over actual living conditions. Not just HK, but also Beijing, Shanghai, and other prosperous Chinese cities. As long as the market value is higher than the average American house, that is all that is needed to boast that the Chinese apartment owner is 'wealthier' than his American HOUSE owner. Wealthy in market value but poor in lifestyle.

You cannot compare US house and China house apple vs orange. There are too much mutually exclusive metrics. In US, there are high property tax which you basically pay up yet another house in 30 years.

China house has big upfront but no property tax.

Also in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, you get numerous infrastructure around your house like good stadium, swimming pool, good schools, metro HSR. There is non in existence in US.

The better places in US are gated community.

In US unlike in Beijing Shanghai, your house can turn to be slump very soon if the city shows compassion to homeless. Crime is issue in US but not in China.

 

[Mista]

Having a baby is pushing me out of the apartment life and into suburbia as well. Even if you don’t need the space the tiny humans do.. by a lot more

Just came across some informative videos. Would recommend watching it.

 

[jhungary]

These partitioned spaces are very common in UAE. Those who earn less or want to save more live in these shared spaces. Those who ca afford live in rooms or apartments. Whats the point of portraying it sad?.
If city life is secure, prospect of growth is robust, hardwork pays off, food is healthy etc. Whats the point of having huge living spaces in a toxic society with corrupt to core governments, bad law and order, no economic prosperity prospects and laughable returns on hardwork?

Those who live in "Coffin House" are not transient worker, they were there in a long haul.

It was a problem before when I left Hong Kong (I left around 1998) that is because the government withholding land (Coincidently after 1997 turn over) and not developing them or redeveloping them, the excuse the government had back then is that those land are too expensive to buy off and it would not be worth it if they buy those land with extremely high price (about 2,000 USD per square feet). So there are a lot of under-development on rural or even sub-urban areas.

The problem is, at HKD$3000 a month rent back in 1998, people living in these coffin house is going to stay there for generation because there are no prospect at all to get any upgrade in their living conditions. Simply because a good 400 sq ft apartment or condo is renting out for HKD$13,000 a month now, which is out of most of what these people can reach, and buying an apartment is probably just a pipedream because to do that, you would need to have million dollars at the bank to pay for a 7 million dollars properties deposit just to move up. The only possible way for these people to move out of these coffin houses is for the government to buy off land where these old accommodations located redeveloping it. But as I mentioned before, this is not going to happened. Which is basically what leaving these people in limbo

This is the suburb I used to live, and I used to live in the block like the foreground before (Different, I think this is block 19 next to the food market) And you want the government to build more house in the background, not staying in the foreground.

 

[jhungary]

It was a deliberate trap by the British especially in the imminent of 1997 to jack to the housing price.

House price can only go one way, otherwise there are massive harm to the economy. Property crash is not just about real asset sector itself but with massive national financial implications. It destroy collaterals, creates a mark down in asset value, and in the end destroy M3.

When M3 gets destroyed, even real economy gets affected. Industries cannot borrow.

House price also cause low fertility.

Best is not to allow house price to inflate across all segments.

But then there is always a need to inflate house price in the top segment, in order to sanitize hot monies. The solution would be to have a public housing to all people and a luxury housing targetting world richest.

In Singapore I would say during Lee Kuan Yew's time, this is done better. Today it is not that good and not so bad either.

Dude, I suggested that you don't put in your opinion if you do not know what you are talking about.

Under British rule, there a teady scheme of puting people from housing estate into either Public Housing (Government funded private own housing or in Chinese 居者有其屋計劃) or Flat for Sale Scheme (住宅發售計劃) basically is selling Government owned Rental Properties to private owner at a discounted price, it was latter replaced with Tenant Purchase Scheme 租者置其屋計劃.

The problem is, before Turn Over, it was mostly British Government who force both Hong Kong and British Ex-Pat Tycoon to buy land and redeveloped it in order to subsidise low-income housing, either selling them private, or selling them to the government and issue to low-income earner thru 4 different government programs. These programs were cancelled when Chinese Government took over and it make the situation worse by British Expat funding dry up, with Swire Group or even HSBC stepping out of the housing game. That in turn get worse by the mainlander buying up house in Hong Kong and drive the price up. My brother brought a 450 sq ft block in Sham Shui Po in 2012 for 2.5 million, and by 2017, it was worth 7 million.

Now I don't know which government is to blame, but all I know is, before when under British Rule, people waited 10 years to get into government housing block, and after it returned to China, the latest wait time is between 35 to 50 years. So you can blame the British all you like, but whether or not that is the truth remained to be seen.

In my opinnion in HK also the poor class lives like this. Like people who are broke, Unskilled labor, jobless etc.
UAE have a very different economy compared to HK. All lower level work is done by Foreign labor. Locals are all high income.
These people might be homeless in country like USA. It is not as horrible as it is made in the video. a roof on head is still a roof. better then streets

I really doubt these people will be homeless in the US, those coffin home aren't cheap to rent, it was about $3500 a month a unit back in late 90s, it probably goes up to around $7000 to $10,000 a month now. You can rent a very nice condo or even suburban home for that price, used to rent a place up in Harlem, it cost me around 2400 USD a month, which is right smack in the middle of NYC. And the price is similar to these coffin home in Hong Kong.

But the problem is, these people probably weren't ever going to live in the US.

 

[Song Hong]

Just came across some informative videos. Would recommend watching it.

This is only a problem with US. In Europe the suburbs and even village are quite walkable. Also in Europe people like to bike.

US suburds are really decentralize and you even got to drive to go groccery. Even the car park of Walmart (often the car park have other big malls and restarant) can be as long as 1 km.

Dude, I suggested that you don't put in your opinion if you do not know what you are talking about.

Under British rule, there a teady scheme of puting people from housing estate into either Public Housing (Government funded private own housing or in Chinese 居者有其屋計劃) or Flat for Sale Scheme (住宅發售計劃) basically is selling Government owned Rental Properties to private owner at a discounted price, it was latter replaced with Tenant Purchase Scheme 租者置其屋計劃.

The problem is, before Turn Over, it was mostly British Government who force both Hong Kong and British Ex-Pat Tycoon to buy land and redeveloped it in order to subsidise low-income housing, either selling them private, or selling them to the government and issue to low-income earner thru 4 different government programs. These programs were cancelled when Chinese Government took over and it make the situation worse by British Expat funding dry up, with Swire Group or even HSBC stepping out of the housing game. That in turn get worse by the mainlander buying up house in Hong Kong and drive the price up. My brother brought a 450 sq ft block in Sham Shui Po in 2012 for 2.5 million, and by 2017, it was worth 7 million.

Now I don't know which government is to blame, but all I know is, before when under British Rule, people waited 10 years to get into government housing block, and after it returned to China, the latest wait time is between 35 to 50 years. So you can blame the British all you like, but whether or not that is the truth remained to be seen.


I really doubt these people will be homeless in the US, those coffin home aren't cheap to rent, it was about $3500 a month a unit back in late 90s, it probably goes up to around $7000 to $10,000 a month now. You can rent a very nice condo or even suburban home for that price, used to rent a place up in Harlem, it cost me around 2400 USD a month, which is right smack in the middle of NYC. And the price is similar to these coffin home in Hong Kong.

But the problem is, these people probably weren't ever going to live in the US.

I suggest you stop misinforming.

It was the British collluding with local tycoon to jack up house price. The land release is too little and many landbank converted to parks under British. You cannot explain that why Singapore can achieve very high house ownership during this period.

It was the China supported Tung Chee Hwa who tried to implement public housing but HK people are too hijack. They oppose Chinese plans.

No housing crisis if ex-Hong Kong leader had stuck to flats goal

The city’s third chief executive uses a pro-Beijing commentator’s book launch to urge more outspokenness.

www.scmp.com

 

[Song Hong]

A lot of European suburbs are quite dense or could be regard as satellite town -- very much unlike US suburbs. The are very pedestrian friendly and provide good green space. It is quite nice living in European suburbs.

And whether suburbs or cities, most people are more atomized than village. In village, most residence are relatives and neighbours for thousands of years.

Also living in suburbs give people a lot of greenspace and garden. People tends to be more friendly.

Crime rate is always lower than city.


Which is why -- if Suburbs is so bad, why would rich moving there like dove fleeing inner cities.

Saint-Cyr-l'École, Île-de-France

Vizille, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes​

https://www.google.com/streetview​

 

[jhungary]

This is only a problem with US. In Europe the suburbs and even village are quite walkable. Also in Europe people like to bike.

US suburds are really decentralize and you even got to drive to go groccery. Even the car park of Walmart (often the car park have other big malls and restarant) can be as long as 1 km.



I suggest you stop misinforming.

It was the British collluding with local tycoon to jack up house price. The land release is too little and many landbank converted to parks under British. You cannot explain that why Singapore can achieve very high house ownership during this period.

It was the China supported Tung Chee Hwa who tried to implement public housing but HK people are too hijack. They oppose Chinese plans.

View attachment 906999

No housing crisis if ex-Hong Kong leader had stuck to flats goal

The city’s third chief executive uses a pro-Beijing commentator’s book launch to urge more outspokenness.

www.scmp.com

lol, I live thru the last 15 years of British Colony rule in Hong Kong, EVERYTHING I SAID I SAW FIRST HAND. And I still have relative in Hong Kong waiting on the Public Housing list

There weren't much public housing problem in Hong Kong before turn over, there were 4 programs instead of 2 being offered now. And since 2014 the government consistently missing the 60% Public Build Housing according to the Department data, actually, can you even name the name of that department who was incharge of Public Housing in Hong Kong?

So yes, I suggest you shut your trap if you know shit on the topic at hand

Hong Kong public housing supply could fall short by 8 per cent: think tank

The government’s promise of backloaded supply just ‘wishful thinking’ and problem ‘may be more pessimistic’.

www.scmp.com

Hong Kong housing target unchanged, but number living in cramped flats to grow

Housing chief Frank Chan suggests economic downturn played a role in 2.4 per cent projected increase in number of inadequately housed residents.

www.scmp.com

Opinion | Hong Kong’s housing shortfall: why the worst is yet to come

Public and private completions in the city are set to plunge in the next few years and experts say a multipronged approach is needed to ensure the looming crisis is averted

www.scmp.com

Lam says Hong Kong will hit public housing target, but data suggests not

Top official’s vow to increase proportion from stated 60 per cent goal raises questions among analysts who point to recent record of building delays.

www.scmp.com

by the way, the article you post confirmed my point of Hong Kong government being the one that cancelled public housing project. IT's weird to say "Hong Kong People do not support such scheme" when it was always the government initiative since Colonial Rule. Please don't bullshit people who actually live in Hong Kong for a long time, or else YOU WILL GET BURN