Housing is famously cramped in the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong, thanks to sky-high property prices, but a single toilet and kitchen shared by four families would make for a challenging home situation anywhere.

“It’s so small here; it’s really inconvenient to live in,” said retired 60-year-old Xiao Bo, as she sat on her bed, eating home-made dumplings off a folding table in a tiny space adorned with pink wallpaper and a rack of colourful tote bags.

Single and opting to give only her first name, she said she had nothing but “painful” memories of the partitioned, cluttered walk-up where she has lived for three years, but could not afford a better flat.

“When you are at home, you’re free. Everyone needs their own space, and even the best house is not as good as having your own," Xiao Bo, 60.

More than 200,000 people in Hong Kong live in sub-divided flats like hers, often cloaked in a musty odour and plagued by bedbugs during sweltering summers.

The former British colony, ranked as the world's most unaffordable city for a 14th consecutive year by survey company Demographia, has one of the world’s highest rates of inequality.

In October, Hong Kong vowed to adopt new laws setting minimum space and safety norms for sub-divided flats, where each resident lives in an area of about 65 sq ft (6 sq m) on average, or half the size of the parking space for a sedan.

“We just want to regulate ... so the market will be providing flats of what we think will be a reasonable and liveable standard,” its leader, John Lee, said at the time.

Hong Kong aims to eliminate subdivided flats by 2049, a target set in 2021 by China’s top official overseeing the city. Beijing sees the housing woes as a serious social problem that helped fuel mass anti-government protests in 2019.

Authorities plan to boost the supply of public housing to shorten waiting times from as much as 5-1/2 years now, saying they have identified more than enough land to build 308,000 public housing units in the next decade.

Hong Kong’s housing problem is the top agenda item for the government, the Housing Bureau said in a written response to Reuters, and it is “determined to eradicate sub-standard sub-divided units”.

Since July 2022, about 49,000 applicants have been housed in public rental housing, and around 18,400 units in what is known as “ transitional housing” have been made available to them for immediate and short-term accommodation, the Bureau said.

Tiny homes

Still, Hong Kong's roughly 110,000 sub-divided flats have become notorious for high rents, with a median floor rate of HK$50 ($6.43) a square foot, a survey by non-government body the Society for Community Organization (SoCO) showed in 2022.

For so-called “coffin” homes, each roughly the size of a single bed, the rate is even higher, at HK$140, exceeding a rate of about HK$35 for private homes.

“All I hope for is to quickly get into public housing,” said Wong Chi-kong, 76, who pays HK$2,900 ($370) for a space smaller than 50 sq ft (5 sq m). His toilet sits right beside his bed and under the shower head.

“You have to endure it. All I hope for is to quickly get into public housing," Wong Chi-kong, 76.

“That’s all I ask for. Amen,” added Wong, who stores all his belongings on the other side of the bed to keep them from getting splashed whenever he takes a shower.

Wong, who uses a walking stick to get around while contending with deteriorating eyesight, spends most of his summer afternoons in a public library to escape the scorching heat trapped in his home.

Yet some may consider Xiao Bo and Wong to be among the more fortunate, as tens of thousands of so-called “coffin” homes fall outside the scope of the new laws.

These windowless spaces are still more cramped, but just big enough, at 15 sq ft (1.4 sq m) to 18 sq ft (1.7 sq m), for people to sleep in and store a few personal items.

“It’s very stuffy. One or two fans aren’t enough. It’s unbearable. The air doesn’t circulate to the outside, and I can’t open the windows because if I do, rats come in since it’s right next to the drain," Kwok Kwai, 65.

But lack of ventilation forces them to leave open the small sliding doors to their homes, denying them any vestiges of privacy.

They also share washrooms with up to 20 others.

“Because the beds are wooden, there are a lot of bedbugs here,” said 80-year-old Leung Kwong Kuen, adding, “Insecticide is useless,” in eradicating them.

Leung used to manage a factory in mainland China before the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, but now, estranged from his wife and two grown-up children, lives in a “coffin” home in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

“I believe in Buddhism; letting go, the past is the past,” he said. “The most important thing is I can still manage to have two meals and a place to sleep for now.”

The sub-divided flats and “coffin” homes are usually located in outdated residential buildings in old business areas, allowing affordable access to workplaces and schools.

'Shame of Hong Kong'

About 1.4 million of Hong Kong’s population of about 7.5 million live in poverty, with the number of poor households rising to 619,000 in the first quarter of 2024, to account for about 22.7% of the total, says non-profit organisation Oxfam.

SoCO called for the new regulations to extend to “coffin” homes.

“This kind of bed homes is the shame of Hong Kong,” said its deputy director, Sze Lai-shan.

“At least here, I have a den. Even dogs have dens, let alone people, right?," Sum, 72.

The Housing Bureau said the Home Affairs Department takes strict enforcement actions against unlicensed bedspace apartments.

Sum, a 72-year-old bachelor, has lived in a “coffin” home for three years, paying HK$2,500 in monthly rent. A Chinese New Year poster on the door to his home reads “Peace and safety wherever you go”.

Personal items, such as a television on the platform where he sleeps, take up half of Sum’s living space. He was formerly homeless and slept under a street flyover for a year.

“I have been waiting [for public housing] for 19 years," Chan, 45

“The most important thing is having a roof over my head, not worrying about getting sunburnt or rained on,” said Sum, who gave only his last name.

Chan, 45, who pays rent of HK$2,100 a month for his 2 sq m (22 sq ft) home, said he hoped public housing would finally enable him to escape the bedbugs.

“I applied in 2005,” he said, providing only one name. “I have been waiting for 19 years.”