3-by-6-Foot Wire-Mesh Cubicle : For Many of Hong Kong’s Elderly, ‘Cages’ Become Home Sweet Home

It is a space only 3 feet wide, 6 feet long and encased by metal wire. But for Ho Hing, it is home.

Ho is one of Hong Kong’s “cage residents,” forced to live in tiny kennel-like compartments because of a lack of better housing in the overcrowded city. He and 73 other elderly men share a single dingy apartment filled with four rows of wire-mesh cubicles, each just large enough to hold a narrow mattress.

“We don’t like living here,” said Ho, 71, who has lived in a cage for 13 years and acts as a spokesman for his roommates in the apartment. “But we don’t have any better alternative.”

The dwellings, just blocks from the gleaming towers and teeming malls of Hong Hong’s Kowloon tourist district, represent a bizarre solution to the city’s high rents and housing shortages.

4,000 Cage Residents

A recent government survey found than more than 4,000 men and women live in such conditions, paying the equivalent of $13 a month for the space in a city where monthly rentals on the cheapest apartments average $1 per square foot.

Most of the cage residents are single, elderly people who rely on public assistance. And most of them used to live in even worse surroundings, according to a study by the Chan Hing Social Service Center in Mong Kok, a heavily populated factory district.

The cramped conditions inside Ho’s two-room apartment in Mong Kok are common. The rows of cages stand a shoulder’s width apart and reach in two tiers to a mildewed, leaking ceiling. The only light comes through a single row of grimy windows.

Each of the 120 cages (46 were empty during a recent visit) holds a thin mattress, a dirty blanket and the tenant’s belongings, sometimes a radio or even a small television. The wire mesh and bars that enclose the box-like homes provide a small measure of security, if not privacy, by allowing residents to lock their possessions inside.

Fire, Health Concerns

Authorities worry not only about the lack of space, but also fire and health hazards.

“There is no fire protection equipment, and the personal hygiene of the men is not very good,” Hui Yin Fat, a member of the local Legislature, said. “There are far too many crowded in a small place.”

The men in the Mong Kok apartment have been ordered by fire officials to stop placing cooking pots on a staircase leading to the roof. But they have paid no attention to the warning.

“There is no room” to put them anywhere else, Ho explained.

‘My Friends Are Here’

Phylomena Fung, a spokeswoman for the Social Welfare Department, said the government is working to correct the situation.

“The most ideal situation, of course, is for the families to look after their elderly members,” she said.

But that traditional Chinese solution does not always work. Ho said he had the option of living with his son but prefers the Mong Kok apartment, where the sense of community is so strong that the locks have been removed.

“My friends are here,” he said. “I would feel isolated in the one room of my son’s flat.”

Some Reject Housing

Similarly, many of the cage men reject a government-sponsored housing program for the exceptionally destitute and elderly. Under the plan, three elderly people are assigned to a single apartment.

“Government housing requires three people to live together, and many of them don’t want to live with strangers,” said Kong Siu-hong, a social worker with the Chan Hing center. “If one of them doesn’t pay the rent, the other two are in trouble.”

And for many of the residents, the cages have become a way of life.

“We get used to it,” one man said.