14 Shocking Photos Reveal What It’s Like To Live In Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’

@Rokas L: as discussed on many posts before, please do not forget to add SI units for the rest of us. 15-120 sq ft translate to 1,5-12 m². I needed to calculate this, to get a better idea. Particularly the lower end (1,5 m²) is even more depressing than the photos are. Most civicised countries have a magnitude of that as minimum space for prisoners, as everything else would be considered inhumane...

Hong Kong is also a very wealthy city, this hideous disparity in terms of wealth needs to end!

This is all too common in many major world cities. The lowest people on the wage earning scale that provide the necessarty labor to maintain simple infrastructure often cannot afford to live in the very cities they work in. I live in the midwest of the US (Oklahoma), where my wages are pretty high and our cost of living is realtively low. Some would say living in a medium city of approximately 1 million in a flyover state must be boring and lackluster, but I have access to the latest concerts and shows, can see world class art on display, in less than one hour be in the country swimming and boating at a lake or just enjoying a drive on an empty rural road... and I do not live in a phone box. The huge cities are a great place to visit but...

I wonder what the outside looks like

It's sad and lonely... But sincerely, I think it's better then live in the streets, completely homeless...

As someone who has restless leg syndrome, this is like hell to me. I can't imagine not being able to walk in my apartment. Horrible! And yes, I am claustrophobic too, double hell.

That is quite a collection of ugly feet.

This made me feel grateful for home..

How the hell so you get in/out? What if there's a fire!

Shocking to see, made my stomach turn.

Housing standards are always closely related to the quality of governance in the relevant area, i.e. most people are aware of how spacious are houses in the US, while there can be significant differences in quality of that housing because poor governance in some states. HK is the part of China, where the quality of housing significantly varies depending on the province. Who allows for such a situation in HK? I blame the local government. Obviously there is more to that, but the underlying issue is the lack of vision by allowing the economy to be heavy concentrated in the small geographic areas, unsustainable architectural planing, ineffective social support system that should educate people about opportunities outside of the ‘matrix’ etc, etc.

Why have none of them got a bloody sheet on their bed.. 🤮

I would rather live in a car, but at least they have place to sleep, but still... 🙁 Sad places for living.

I would go insane living like that, I have lived in some flea pits in my time but that’s just crazy.

thats an amazing eye opener...makes me realized that I should be grateful for the home I have right now.

As bad as these look, they are far preferable to sleeping under a bridge with a shopping cart for your possessions. Like the old saying goes, "I thought it was terrible to have no shoes till I met the man with no feet".

No window? Where is the ventilation? So depressing! As the population grows, conditions will worsen. Looks like they'll need birth control like they had in China.

Worse than jail

Wow this is definitely sad. If these things have electricity, one small electrical fire would kill everyone.

En dan denk ik dat ik klein woon!?!

Sadly HK is overpopulated! These coffin cubicles are at least 2.5k to 3k monthly depending on location. Monthly income for these guys are at most between 6k-8k, may be less as I'm estimating, and they still need to buy food. They may have applied for government housing too, which takes at least 5-10 years to get one depending on the government's condition. (Government housing, of course, has a bigger space). The government houses are in demand now and building them takes long. Living like this is inhumane, they also need to go to public bathrooms to do their business.

I am so grateful for what I have here in the U.S.A. I am not uncomfortable with small spaces but these pictures make me very uncomfortable. I hope these people get the change they deserve and are able to live in a reasonable living space.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like living in Kowloon walled city.

I agree with one of the replys - think of these poor people next time we want to gripe about what we don't have!

I want to kiss the walls of my dumpy old apartment with its aging hippie/early Salvation Army decor. It's a palace compared to those suffocating little boxes. I imagine a person would spend most of his/her time outdoors.