With temperatures in Hong Kong set to stay high in the coming days, impoverished residents living in subdivided flats, rooftop structures and cage homes are suffering the most. - AFP
HONG KONG: Home for Jo is a metal-encased rooftop structure in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where she has been suffering from heat-induced headaches for days.
“It’s so hot in the day that you can get burned from touching the metal walls,” said the restaurant worker, adding that she sweats a lot and the heat makes sleeping at night difficult.
Jo, who is in her 50s, lives with two others in the 200sq ft rooftop home. She wanted to be known only by her surname for privacy reasons.
“Our home feels like a bun steamer,” she said.
She is one of thousands of residents in low-income housing in the territory who are the worst hit by the ongoing extreme heat that Hong Kong is facing this summer.
The city recorded its hottest day so far in 2024 on July 7, with temperatures reaching 35deg C in several areas.
The Hong Kong Observatory has issued “very hot weather” warnings for all except two days since June 20. Under the warning, residents are reminded to take more precautions to avoid prolonged sun exposure and heatstroke.
With temperatures set to stay high in the coming days, impoverished residents living in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, rooftop structures and cage homes are suffering the most, according to the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), a non-governmental organisation.
More than 90 per cent of those living in such “inadequate housing” reported feeling unwell, and experiencing health issues and difficulties sleeping, because their living quarters were too hot, according to a recent SoCO survey published on July 7.
The study polled more than 300 people between June and early July on how the summer heat had been affecting them physically, mentally and financially.
“The dwellers in such housing are facing significantly more hardships in this intense summer heat,” SoCO deputy director Sze Lai Shan told The Straits Times.
“The heat has forced them to spend even more of their already limited finances on more water, electricity, seeing the doctor and buying pesticides to counter the proliferation of rats, woodlice and so on.”
Li, a housewife who lives with her husband and their seven-year-old daughter in a 150sq ft subdivided flat in To Kwa Wan, has been feeling the pinch in her power bills.
“It has just been too hot for us not to turn on the air-con once we get home or right before bedtime,” said Li, who gave only her surname for privacy reasons. “That’s the only solution for us, but it has hurt our wallets.”
One of Jo’s flatmates, too, has had to spend money on medicated creams to relieve the itch from heat-related eczema flare-ups caused by the hot and wet weather.
Recent thunderstorms have briefly cooled the air, but worsened the humidity and heat after they passed. The observatory on July 12 said Hong Kong might see the first typhoon of 2024 on July 14.
Residents of such dwellings are predominantly low-income workers and families, the unemployed and new immigrants as they are priced out of better-quality housing.
Hong Kong’s subdivided units are typically no bigger than 150sq ft, about the size of a standard parking space in Singapore. Rooftop huts range between 100sq ft and 300sq ft, while cage homes can be as small as 15sq ft, smaller than a single-sized mattress.
Many of these dwellings are also situated in the city’s most built-up areas, with little greenery to provide shade or cool the air, contributing to what is known as the “urban heat island effect”.
Sze said SoCO installed thermometers in 14 subdivided flats, rooftop structures and cage homes across the city and found that temperatures in these cramped quarters reached as high as 41deg C – 7deg C hotter than outdoors.
Poor ventilation and materials such as metal sheets, which absorb and trap heat, used in such housing turn the homes into “ovens”, with little respite even at night when temperatures typically dip, the social worker said.
Residents living in these conditions have been seeking relief from their homes by staking out air-conditioned malls, libraries and other public facilities, she added.
In the long term, these residents face a host of issues that compromise their well-being.
“Young children, in particular, are very sensitive to the weather and have lower heat tolerance than adults,” social worker Shirley Yu told ST.
“As their parents tend to try to save on costs by not using the air-con, the kids often suffer from insomnia and bad temper in the summer.”
Over time, the children’s physical discomfort could, in turn, affect their mental, emotional and behavioural development as well as their performance at school, Yu said.
A 2023 scientific study by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found that the number of hot nights in the city will increase by 50 per cent to about 48 days a year by the 2040s.
Hot nights are those where the “daily minimum temperature is more than or equal to 28deg C in the period between May and September”, according to the study. There was an average of 20 hot nights yearly from 2001 to 2010, and 32 days from 2011 to 2020.
The city’s most densely populated areas in Sha Tin, Tuen Mun, Kowloon and the north and south of Hong Kong Island, as well as the airport region in Tung Chung, are projected to be the most heavily affected by the rising heat.
The government has been trying to improve low-income residents’ living conditions by providing more public flats and temporary housing options, and regulating subdivided flats, which often pose health, fire and security risks to their inhabitants.
But the average wait for public housing is around 5.8 years, and a transitional housing scheme is still awaiting roll-out in 2025 at the earliest. Meanwhile, a government task force is still working on proposals to crack down on substandard subdivided flats and their operators.
Beijing’s top official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, Xia Baolong, has previously said the city should eradicate its subdivided flats and cage homes by 2049. But no timeline has yet been set to phase them out completely.
With Hong Kong likely to see more extreme weather events due to climate change, SoCO has urged the government to do more to help the underprivileged cope.
Measures that would help include improving the energy efficiency and heat resistance in low-income housing as well as providing free access to swimming pools and other community facilities to help residents escape the heat, it said.
On July 8, the Housing Authority announced that it plans to raise the city’s public housing rents by the maximum 10 per cent allowed under government stipulations.
If the plan goes through, tenants would, on average, pay HK$230 (US$30) more in rent every month from January, “an amount that many residents can afford”, said Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho.
Tenants who qualify for aid can have their rent reduced by up to 50 per cent, she added.
But SoCO’s Sze argued that members of the sandwich class could fall between the cracks.
“Increasing rents will affect those who earn fairly low income yet happen to fall outside the limits to qualify for subsidies”, she said.
A 2021 government report revealed that one-third of households living in subdivided flats earned a monthly income of at least HK$20,000 (US$2561), exceeding their public housing income ceiling.
The limit is HK$12,940 and HK$19,730 for one- and two-person households respectively, according to the Housing Authority’s website.
Jo is among this sandwiched group of residents. While she declined to disclose her income, she said she earns slightly more than the limit that would have qualified her for public housing.
“The government should consider loosening the criteria and procedures for applying and qualifying for public housing rental reductions,” Sze said.
Rents in Hong Kong have been rising as students and professionals from mainland China and abroad return to the city after all Covid-19 restrictions were lifted at the end of 2022.
Prospective home buyers have also turned to the rental market, putting off home purchases due to persistently high interest rates and expectations that property prices will fall further.
There are more than 800,000 households in Hong Kong’s public rental flats, according to the government.
Over 220,000 residents live in subdivided flats, rooftop structures and cage homes – which are privately owned – across the city of around 7.5 million people. – The Straits Times/ANN
