The Micro Apartments of Hong Kong
A reminder that in Hong Kong, people who cannot afford housing live in little apartments that resemble cages because they are cages. Kelvin Chan for the AP:
“For … Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage. The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.”
This is not a new development. These cage apartments have been around since the 1950s. Edward Gargan of The New York Times wrote about them in 1996 and talked to a man who had been living in his cage for 36 years.
The Daily Mail has a series of pictures by Brian Cassey if you would like to see what it looks like when grown men live in cages. (It doesn’t look great.)
These cages could be an inspiration to Mayor Bloomberg who is intent on shrinking aparmtent sizes in NY. Why does anyone need an entire room to ones self?
Well, those cage apartments definitely wouldn’t cost $167/month anywhere in the West.
This happens in the US, just without the metal bars. Usually our subdivided apartments are done with sheets hanging from lines.