What life is like inside Hong Kong's cramped 'coffin homes' housing over 200,000 people

Time of India

4 days ago

Imagine living in a home that measures just 15 to 18 square feet. You pay £217 a month for it. Stretch your arms, and you can touch both walls. Lie down, and your feet meet clutter. Privacy? Gone.
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Ventilation? Barely. Now imagine this isn't a nightmare or a prison cell—it's home. For over 200,000 people in Hong Kong, this isn't a metaphor. It's their everyday reality inside what the world has come to know as 'coffin homes.'
These aren't homes in the traditional sense. They are wooden or metal boxes stacked like filing cabinets, hidden within decaying towers in Hong Kong's forgotten corners. Some are subdivided flats chopped into 26 'units' no larger than a dog kennel.
A flickering lightbulb, a fan struggling in the sweltering heat, a mattress, a TV covered in wires—this is what £217 buys in the world's most unaffordable housing market.
YouTuber Drew Binsky called it 'the sad reality of life in HK' after documenting one such property. He's right. But sad doesn't even begin to cover it.
'A city of two realities'
Walk the streets of Mid-Levels or Victoria Peak, and you'll find pristine towers, luxury malls, and the kind of opulence that glimmers.
But turn a corner into Sham Shui Po or Mong Kok, and it's a different Hong Kong altogether. Behind rusty gates and chipped stairwells lie the coffin homes—often with no natural light, no windows, no proper sanitation.
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Many residents keep their sliding doors open, not out of choice but necessity. Without airflow, these cells become suffocating ovens. Bugs crawl through cracks. The air smells of dampness, old food, and despair.
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Toilets, shared by dozens, are often infested and barely cleaned. Yet within these tight quarters, elderly pensioners, delivery workers, and even full-time employees find shelter. It's all they can afford.
The inequality is staggering. Hong Kong has ranked as the world's least affordable city for 14 straight years, and the Gini coefficient—a measure of income disparity—is among the highest globally. One man pays thousands for a mountain-view penthouse.
Another sleeps inches from a stranger behind a plywood wall.
Coffins with a past, and a plan for the future
The story of coffin homes isn't new. Their origin traces back to the late 1950s, when migrants from mainland China arrived in droves. Employers often provided accommodation—metal bunk beds enclosed in chicken-wire fencing. Some of these "caged homes" still exist today, relics of a past that never fully left.
Over time, what began as temporary housing morphed into a permanent solution for the working poor and elderly.
But the health consequences are severe. Cramped and often unhygienic, these spaces worsen physical and mental illness. Depression, anxiety, and respiratory diseases are common. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing was a cruel joke; many buildings housed six times their intended capacity.
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The United Nations once called these conditions 'an insult to human dignity.' The Hong Kong government, under pressure, has vowed to eliminate coffin homes by 2049.
Promises include 308,000 new public housing units over the next decade. Since mid-2022, around 49,000 people have been relocated. But progress is slow, and for the man curled up in a wooden box tonight, the year 2049 may as well be a century away.
The forgotten fortress
There's an eerie resemblance between today's coffin homes and the long-gone Kowloon Walled City. Once the most densely populated place on Earth, it crammed 50,000 people into 6.4 acres—a vertical labyrinth of lawlessness.
Narrow alleys, towering blocks, and no governance. A city within a city.
The Walled City was demolished in the 1990s, but its ghost lives on. You can still feel its echo in the crowded tenements and flickering hallways of Hong Kong's poorest districts. History, as they say, repeats itself—especially when no one's listening.
So, the next time you look at a skyline glittering in postcards, remember: behind every light, there may be a box. Behind every box, a story. And behind every story, a human being waiting for more than just space—they're waiting to be seen.