Inside Hong Kong’s Cage Homes

Apartments coming to a neighborhood near you in Marinwood/ Lucas Valley/Terra Linda

Editor's Note: The fight for sensible land use is being fought in Seattle too. Like Marin, zealous planners, politicians and housing advocates are rezoning neighborhoods for affordable housing, micro apartments and the conversion of single family neighborhoods into multifamily apartment blocks. This is the idea behind the Priority Development Area in Marinwood and the rest of the 101 corridor. This is the future of Marinwood if they get their way and pass SB-1. It will allow redevelopment ANYWHERE without a declaration of blight.

The Fight Against Small Apartments

Why Neighborhood Groups Are Uniting to Stop Developers from Building Tiny, Affordable Units

by DOMINIC HOLDEN

KELLY O

In May of 2009, a rumor was floating around City Hall. Homeowners on Capitol Hill were furious about a construction project. So one sunny afternoon, while workers hammered nails into a few unfinished buildings near 23rd Avenue and East John Street, I went knocking on doors to find out what the problem was.

One neighbor was Alan Gossett. Gossett was trying to sell his blue Craftsman house, which shared an alley with the new development. Standing on the corner of his rear deck, Gossett pointed through the trees to the half-built structure and said, "I think this is going to be a magnet for very sketchy people."

Why sketchy?

According to permitting paperwork, the building was a commonplace cluster of six town houses—the sort that would typically attract well-to-do buyers. But inside each town house, the developer was building up to eight tiny units (about 150 to 250 square feet each, roughly the size of a carport) to be rented out separately. The tenants would each have a private bathroom and kitchenette, with a sink and microwave, but they would share one full kitchen for every eight residents. The rent would be cheap—starting at $500 a month, including all utilities and Wi-Fi—making this essentially affordable housing in the heart of the city. And, remarkably, for affordable housing, it was built without any subsidies from the city's housing levy. But Gossett was bracing for 46 low-income renters in the space where he'd been expecting six new homeowners instead.

Gossett and other neighbors felt hoodwinked, they told me.

There was no public notification and no review process that allowed neighbors to pose objections. This was due to a loophole in the permits: The city and developers classified the building as six units (with up to eight bedrooms each), instead of as an apartment building with dozens of units, which would have required a more public process. Neighbors said they feared that the area wasn't ready for so many new residents and that the influx of newcomers would usurp on-street parking. But Gossett also seemed concerned by who his new neighbors might be.

"Anyone who can scrape up enough money to live month-to-month can live there," he said, worried that low-income interlopers would jeopardize his chances to sell his own house. "I don't think most people want to live next to a boarding house with itinerant people living in it."

Live in a Drainpipe? Five Extreme Ideas to Solve Hong Kong’s Housing Crisis

Live in a Drainpipe? Five Extreme Ideas to Solve Hong Kong’s Housing Crisis

By AUSTIN RAMZYMARCH 26, 2018

Hong Kong has the world’s most expensive housing market. A government task force is considering solutions.CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times


HONG KONG — For eight years in a row, an international survey of nearly 300 cities has named Hong Kong the world’s least affordable housing market.

It is not hard to see why. Located on a group of hilly islands and a corner of the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong has always been short of places to build. The government’s reliance on land sales for revenue creates an incentive to keep prices high. Money pouring in from mainland Chinese investors pushes them even higher.

The extremes can be staggering. A single parking spot sold for $664,000 last year. Apartments only slightly bigger, and in much less desirable parts of town, go for more than $380,000. Living spaces have shrunk so much that a new term has emerged: “nano flat,” for apartments measuring around 200 square feet or less.

Many Hong Kongers have been priced out of the housing market, including young people forced to live with their parents. Their discontent is said to have contributed to recent street protests like the 2014 Umbrella Movement.

A government task force is considering a wide range of options for making better use of available land. Architects and developers have also put forward some novel proposals, ranging from the quirky to the audacious. While some of the ideas may be repackaged versions of the cramped spaces the city has long known, others could reshape the future of housing in Hong Kong. Here are some of the ideas:
Living in a DrainpipeContinue reading the main story

Photo
A prototype of the OPod, designed by the architect James Law, which would create a living space of about 100 square feet out of concrete drainpipe. CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times


The architect James Law was at a construction site in town when he noticed some concrete pipes left over from an infrastructure project. They were large enough to walk in, cool in the summer and surprisingly nicely finished.


“I had a eureka moment,” he said.

So he spent about a month designing and building the OPod, two sections of concrete drainpipe joined to create a living space of about 100 square feet. It includes a couch and foldout bed, a desk, shelving, a tiny kitchenette, a hanging closet and a shower.

The pods can be stacked up to five high, or placed in small, unused spaces between buildings and under bridges. A prototype is now on display in a waterfront park, but there are no plans yet for commercial production.

“It is not a complete solution to what is a very complex problem,” Mr. Law said. “But it is a fun, design-oriented way to stimulate debate and even, on a small scale, create model projects.”
Return of the Tenements

Photo
Bibliotheque, a half-century-old building turned into slickly designed dormitory-like living spaces with shared kitchens and bathrooms. CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times


One idea is already a reality, in a pair of 50-year-old buildings with distinctive blue, gray and green geometric patterns.

The buildings stand on a street lined with shops selling power tools and industrial fans. Such tenements, known as tong lau, were common here in Hong Kong before high-rises. Synergy Biz Group, a local architecture and development company, has recycled them into communal living spaces with some modern touches.

Called Bibliotheque, the buildings feature slickly designed dormitory-like living spaces with shared kitchens and bathrooms. The rooms are tiny, with about 50 square feet per single unit, and cost from about $450 to $750 a month. The residents are mostly young, drawn by rents that are low by Hong Kong standards.

Jo Chow, a 33-year-old office administrator who lives in one of the spaces, said she pays half of what she did for an apartment in a more distant corner of Hong Kong.

“For me, I just need a flat in a convenient location,” she said. “I don’t need a big place to live right now.”

Some people have criticized these spaces as new takes on Hong Kong’s infamous “coffin homes,” apartments that have been subdivided into tiny spaces, and questioned the appeal of such cramped, communal arrangements.

“They may save on the cost of rent,” said Yip Ngai-ming, a professor of public policy at City University of Hong Kong. “But whether it will work, I don’t know.”

But Keith Wong, the director of Synergy, argued that group living provided security and a sense of community. He said the company wanted to add more buildings and to work with landlords to convert individual apartments.
Building Up (Even More) to the SkyContinue reading the main story

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A design by University of Hong Kong students for adding to the height of public housing towers near the Chai Wan neighborhood in Hong Kong. CreditHo Yuen Hin Sonia and Li Zhongqi Cheer


Half a century ago, when refugees poured into Hong Kong to escape turmoil in mainland China, the city started a public housing program that provides residences, usually in high-rises, for nearly half of the population today.

The architect and professor David Erdman has suggested fitting in more people in those same buildings by going even higher, adding cornices of from 5 to 25 stories atop the existing structures, which are already often about 40 stories tall already.

The idea was inspired by discussions with former colleagues at the University of Hong Kong about fitting additional housing in the spaces between public housing blocks. Building upward instead would offer the same result without harming existing amenities, said Mr. Erdman, now chairman of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

His students have produced dramatic designs that would transform the drab and repetitive look of Hong Kong’s public housing complexes. “I would love to see one built,” Mr. Erdman said.
Cruise Ships and Islands

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Care to live on a cruise ship? That’s another thought for how to solve Hong Kong’s housing crisis, as envisioned in a design by Doctoral Exchange, a local research organization.CreditDoctoral Exchange


Perhaps the most unconventional idea calls for putting people on cruise liners.

The floating community would not be a permanent solution but is instead the first step in a proposal from Doctoral Exchange, a local research group.

The second step of the plan is even more ambitious: building several large artificial islands in the sea to the south of Hong Kong. The new, 45-square-mile archipelago would fall outside Hong Kong’s boundaries, meaning it would require backing from China’s central government.

Island building on such a scale would likely face opposition over potential environmental damage. But China would have at least one advantage in such a project, said Francis Neoton Cheung of Doctoral Exchange. It could use the same reclamation technology that it is currently developing in the South China Sea to build military strongholds on what were once sunken reefs, he said.

“I know it’s a bit daring, but it might be the solution,” he said. “If circumstances allow.”
Turning Ports into TowersContinue reading the main story

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A view of Hong Kong’s container port. Some have proposed moving the port elsewhere to build more housing, or to build housing on top of it. CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times


Hong Kong’s container port is the world’s fifth-largest by volume. It also sits on an iconic part of the waterfront that the government task force is now looking at to ease the land shortage.

Hundreds of thousands of people could live on the port’s 900 acres. One proposal calls for relocating the port to make way for housing. Another calls for keeping the port where it is, while constructing huge platforms above its bustling waterfront cranes on which residential skyscrapers could then be built.

Officials call this idea feasible, and the port operator says it is open to the idea, but the cost and levels of public support are still unknown.

Like other more ambitious ideas for new housing, the port-topping towers might never be built. But the idea of redeveloping ports isn’t so unusual. One of Hong Kong’s first large-scale private housing developments, Taikoo Shing, was built on the site of Swire Company’s dockyards.

Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles Part 4

Life Inside Hong Kong's Coffin Cubicles Part 3

Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’ Part 2

Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’ Part 1

Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’

Pushed out by the sky-high prices of rent in glittering Hong Kong, these people get by in illegally subdivided apartments.

   

The Worlds 10 Smallest Apartments

The "tiny home" trend probably isn't going anywhere, at least for the time being, and we sort of get it. Minimalism is cool, and there's something enchanting about the idea of throwing away all of your unnecessary stuff and living with just the bare essentials.

But for apartment dwellers in large cities, minimalism isn't a choice; it's a way of life.

"The key is to be conscious of what you truly love and need and use, and then create 'homes' for each item," says Felice Cohen, who lived in a 90-square-foot apartment in New York for four years (more on that in a moment). "It might take a while to figure out how to store stuff, but once you do, it can be truly rewarding."

What does [make me happy] are experiences, not stuff.

Rewarding, sure, but it also requires some serious discipline. Here's a look at 10 of the smallest apartments in the world. Keep this in mind the next time you complain about closet space...

Manhattan (90 Square Feet)

No, this isn't the smallest apartment on this list, but it's a great introduction to tiny living.

First, the good points: This tiny apartment is just a block away from Central Park, and when she lived there, Felice Cohen paid $700 per month, which is incredibly cheap for New York.

That tiny space continues to make my life bigger.

There were, of course, some substantial drawbacks; we spoke with Cohen to find out how she dealt with the limitations of this minuscule pad.

Kirsten Diksen/YouTube

"With no kitchen, I wasn't able to make scrambled eggs," Cohen tells FashionBeans. "I also didn't have a couch to spread out on. But that was pretty much it [for the disadvantages]; those wants were fleeting. I made it work for me. Sure, I would have liked to host dinner parties, and there were occasions when I had two friends over for take out, but in [New York], there are many places to go to."

Eventually, Cohen says that her tiny apartment gave her a new sense of perspective.

"I felt that tiny space gave me the opposite of limits," she says. "Those 90 square feet stretched around the world. I have heard from strangers all over the globe asking for my advice on organizing and praising my philosophy on living large in a small space. That experience made me realize that I had a philosophy—one that I still have living in a larger space."

As for the apartment itself, it featured a fairly standard bathroom, a bed (located above the apartment entrance), and a toaster oven. Cohen says that, in a pinch, she could fit nine people in the apartment (but when possible, she'd ask to meet her friends somewhere else).

Leaves of Grass

Still, we had to ask: Does she miss her cozy apartment?

"No, I don't miss the tiny space," Cohen says. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a special place in her heart for it: "I loved it for the years I was there, and it served its purpose, allowing me to quit my stressful job and finish writing my first book about my grandfather. For that, I will always be grateful. It also helped me to see that living tiny can make my life larger."

Cohen now speaks regularly at Tiny House Festivals (yes, that's a real thing) across the U.S.

"That tiny space continues to make my life bigger," she says.

Hong Kong (4 Square Feet)

In Hong Kong, a 128-square-foot apartment isn't too unusual, but if you can't afford such an extravagance, you can opt for a 4-square-foot "microunit."

I’ve got to live here. I’ve got to survive.

It's essentially a wire mesh cage, but at least it's cheap (about $167 per month, per The New York Daily News).

via The Daily Mail

The paper spoke with Leung Cho-yin, a 67-year-old who rented one of the cages. The man said that bed bugs frequently invade the cramped sleeping spaces.

"I’ve been bitten so much I’m used to it," he said. "There’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve got to live here. I’ve got to survive."

Residents of these spaces wash their clothes in a communal bucket and share a two-stall bathroom. The kitchen is basically just a sink. It is, objectively, a terrible way to live.

The good news is that Carrie Lam, the new Hong Kong Chief Executive, has pledged to "inject as much innovative thinking as possible" into the city's housing market, hopefully reducing the cost of real estate in the process. That's important, because this isn't the only time Hong Kong appears on this list.

Hong Kong (16 Square Feet)

See what we mean? 

This Hong Kong apartment is smaller than the average prison cell. It is, however, significantly more expensive at about $384 per month. For that money, you basically get a closet along with a few amenities including wireless internet, an air conditioning unit, and—sometimes—a window.

YouTube

The building's hallways are small, and the rooms are just big enough for a bed. To personalize the cramped quarters, many residents set up shelves with trinkets and decorations. Still, we imagine that they try not to spend too much time in their tiny homes.

London (60 Square Feet)

This apartment went on the market in 1987. Before that, it was a broom closet; no, we're not kidding.

"My cozy flat is just fine for sleeping," resident Ray Barker told The Daily Mail in 2010, "and it’d be a lot harder getting to my job [without it]."

via The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail reported that the tiny apartment features a convertible sofa bed, a toilet, a shower (which doubles as a closet), and six-inch-deep cupboards.

Barker bought his microscopic space in 2006 for £120,000; in 2010, the flat, which is near Harrods in Knightsbridge, was worth about $264,000.Thanks, housing crisis.

via The Daily Mail

"I do the cleaning while lying in my sofa bed," Barker told the paper. "In fact, I can wash up, answer the door, make a cuppa and go to the loo all at the same time."

That's quite the mental image.

Manhattan (78 Square Feet)

Alright, so this apartment looks more like the entryway to a home than a full living space, but it compares favorably to some of the other entries on this list. The price tag isn't bad, either; residents pay a mere $800 per month to live right in the heart of Manhattan.

The Tiny Life

There are a few caveats. For starters, the apartment has no kitchen and no running water. It shares a single bathroom with three other apartments, which might be a dealbreaker for some people. There's no kitchen, either, but there is a refrigerator and plenty of cabinetry. 

Resident Luke Clark Tyler, who makes his living as an architect, built a convertible sofa-bed for the space, and he keeps dishes, books, and other essentials in a large closet.

The Tiny Life

"If I do want to get something else, I have to be very careful," he explained in a video for FairCompanies.com. "I have to say, 'well, what can I get rid of?'"

Paris (86 Square Feet)

The designers at Kitoko Studios, an architecture and design firm, converted this former maid's quarters into an apartment. It's surprisingly livable, as the designers set out to use the "concept of the Swiss army knife."

Arch Daily

That means that pretty much every surface slides, opens, or unfolds into something else. One cabinet houses a table big enough for two people; another has room for books and a computer. The stairs that lead to the bed double as tiered storage space, and serene artwork covers each cabinet. There's even a window right above the kitchen sink.

As this apartment sits right below the building's roofline, it offers easy roof access for when residents feel claustrophobic. All in all, it's a pretty nice space.

Paris (130 Square Feet)

Call us crazy, but we could definitely live here. Two floor levels make this small space seem much bigger.

Stylish Eve

Julie Nabucet, Architect Marc Baillargeon worked with partner Julie Nabucet to design the space; they packed the apartment with custom furniture including a pull-out bed and stairs with built-in storage. “Our approach to architecture is that the house is not so much a machine for living, but a tool for living well," Baillargeon told Wired.

And live well you will. The apartment’s current owner, Thibaut Ménard, says he notices new things about the space each day, acknowledging that Nabucet and Baillargeon clever designs make full use of the flat.

Stylish Eve

"This studio has been created in a very intelligent and adaptable way of thinking, and with plenty of storage space and cupboards, which makes it suitable for each type of situation," said Thibaut Ménard, the apartment's current owner.

Poland (140 Square Feet)

Polish designer Szymon Hanczar planned out his gorgeous but tiny apartment. "Extremely small flats are great for people who are minimalist, who want to enjoy the city life,” he said.

Jedrzej Stelmaszek

While his apartment doesn't have a kitchen, he did include space for a coffee machine, refrigerator, and a meal prep area. The bed is located right above the bathroom, which has a combination toilet/shower (try not to think too hard about that). A wall-mounted bike serves as Hanczar's transportation around the city.

Jedrzej Stelmaszek

We have to admit, some of these tiny apartments are pretty incredible spaces.

However, we wonder what happens when a minimalist leaves their comfort zone: After you've lived in 90 square feet, are larger apartments overwhelming? 

Not really, according to Cohen, who moved to a 500-square-foot apartment after leaving her tiny New York crib.

"I grew up in a large house and always thought one day I would live in a large house, but after five years in that tiny space, I realized that wouldn't make me happy," Cohen tells us. "What does [make me happy] are experiences, not stuff. I now live in just under 500 square feet and I am always working to fill it with friends and family."