Lai Shan Zse moves quickly, bounding up the grungy, dimly lit stairwell of the unit block in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district. The social worker knocks on a door and announces her arrival, moves into a tiny entranceway and past the tiled kitchenette from where an elderly lady waves, and into a skinny hall lined with what look like plywood cupboards. They are in fact individual units, Hong Kong’s infamous “coffin homes”, housing dozens of tenants in spaces not much larger than a single bed, stacked two high to the ceiling.
Sze, the deputy director of civil rights group the Society for Community Organization (Soco), taps on a couple of the doors, a pile of paper topped with a hastily sketched map of residents scrunched in her other hand. A few faces emerge, and she hands out information sheets, and checks the names of residents she hadn’t previously registered.
“This is the first time I’ve lived in a home like this,” says one woman from a top floor coffin home. She used to live in Shenzhen, in mainland China, but after moving to Hong Kong she and her husband separated.
“My family, relatives and friends will be embarrassed if they see me like this,” she says, asking not to be named or photographed. “I’m just introducing you to the living conditions here in Hong Kong, including for foreign workers like me.”
Hong Kong is famous for its cramped and tiny apartments, or “shoebox housing”, a name that somehow still doesn’t fully convey the claustrophobic nature of the spaces. New reforms announced this year attempt to tackle the problem by mandating major improvements and regulations to be in place by the end of 2026.
But critics have labelled them as unambitious, not targeting the worst of the housing – coffin and cage homes – and risking reducing the city’s overall supply as work to boost public housing fails to meet demand.
There are broadly three types of these tiny living spaces. Regular subdivided units (SDUs) are larger, an average of 13 sq metres according to recent studies, but often housing couples or entire families. The pod-like coffin homes are little larger than a single bed, and only tall enough to sit up in. Cage homes are a similar size, but made of wire.
The Chinese woman’s neighbour, Mr Lau, has lived in coffin homes for more than a decade. Right now, he’s got one near the window looking out over Shanghai Street. “There’s not too much to complain about,” he says. It’s convenient for his work as a street cleaner, which he got after losing his restaurant job during the pandemic. He fears living alone in public housing.
“If you don’t mind and you close the door you can sleep here,” Lau says, laying on his side on the bed. “But there are many problems, like too many people, it’s complicated.”
On cue, as Lau and Sze start talking animatedly to each other, another resident shouts for quiet from a neighbouring room.
Transforming shoebox homes into ‘basic housing units’
The number of cage homes – stacked bed spaces made from actual cage wire – has dropped dramatically, but there are still more than 200,000 people estimated to be living in about 100,000 regular SDUs and smaller bed spaces jammed into apartments across the city.
They are also expensive – studies have found average SDU rents are higher per square metre than single apartments. It’s a lucrative income for landlords who make more than renting out whole apartments. Hong Kong is regularly listed as the world’s worst city for housing affordability.
For decades the Hong Kong government has been under pressure to address the city’s housing inequality which these homes so starkly illustrate. In recent years that pressure has increasingly come from Beijing, now in firmer control over the semi-autonomous city.
In 2021 the Chinese Communist party’s top official on Hong Kong, Xia Baolong, visited and urged administrators to fix “deep-rooted problems” in housing and get rid of cage homes and SDUs by 2049. In response, the Hong Kong government launched an exploratory taskforce in 2023, and in October finally announced new reforms.
The measures set a minimum floor size of 8 square metres for SDUs, and mandate an independent toilet, at least one proper window, and no fire hazards. All must be registered and regularly inspected from late 2026, and will be renamed “basic housing units”.
But critics said the new standard is only one square metre larger than the average prison cell in Hong Kong, and doesn’t increase for units which house couples or entire families. An estimated 50,000 children live in SDUs. About one-third of all SDUs are estimated to be currently below the standards and in need of renovation.
The housing bureau told the Guardian that enforcement of private rental units based on how many people lived in one was “unfeasible”.
“Besides, there are views in the community suggesting that some singleton SDU households do not wish the minimum area requirement to be set too high in order to save rental expenses,” a spokesperson said.
‘Landlords don’t care’
In another Mong Kok building, Sze checks in on an elderly man who is preparing to move out of his SDU because the ceiling keeps collapsing. He shows off the empty room he will move into, which Lai Shan says will meet the new standards. Like his current room, he has a private toilet and kitchen – both share the same cubicle.
The new regulations do not target coffin and cage homes. Hong Kong’s Chief executive, John Lee, said they are already governed by specific ordinances, but critics say the 30-year-old regulations which require landlords to register premises with 12 or more bed spaces are easy to skirt. “The government said it wanted to get rid of ‘low-quality’ sub-divided units, but it’s coffin homes that are the worst,” housing activist Kenny Ng told Hong Kong Free Press.
The housing bureau said it would “step up” enforcement of the cage home laws.
Sze claims none of the homes visited by the Guardian are now registered. “[Landlords] don’t care about how many people are living inside,” she says.
There are also fears about what the improvements will do to prices. “When they upgrade the quality, the rents will go up,” Hong Kong legislator Michael Tien, who has previously advocated for rental caps, told reporters. Rents for coffin homes, the size of a single bed, are as much as HK$3,000 (£310) a month.
Sze says making one standard for all housing would eliminate the coffin and cage homes “but if the government doesn’t have enough public housing or a good rehousing policy, that will be a problem”, and could force people on to the streets or into illegal SDUs. The one thing that could address the problem is to “develop more land and build more public housing”, she says.
Hong Kong’s government says 308,000 new public housing units are needed. The new reforms include a pledge to build 43,600 public housing flats, part of a target to boost current stocks to about 190,000, including temporary housing units, by 2030. Wait lists are now more than five years long, with about 200,000 applicants.
The government says no one will be left without a roof over their heads, noting 60% of SDU residents are eligible for public housing. But they also said tenants who lost their flats under the new regulations would not be prioritised ahead of others. “[Prioritising them] would encourage people to move into the worst subdivided units, hoping that they will get phased out,” said housing secretary Winnie Ho, according to Hong Kong Free Press.
Few residents who speak to the Guardian are optimistic.
“The government says it, but they can’t actually do it,” says Coco, a SDU resident of 24 years.
“They want to renovate these few houses to ensure they have windows, but [the landlords] can’t do it because it costs money … And even with money it’s not feasible. I think some things they just can’t accomplish.”
