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 35°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% 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 said.
“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.
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 41°C – 7°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 said.
“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% to about 48 days a year by the 2040s.
Hot nights are those where the “daily minimum temperature is more than or equal to 28%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 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. — The Straits Times/ANN
