Michael Chugani

Public Eye | Opinion: affordable housing a distant dream for ordinary Hongkongers

Michael Chugani says residents in city should blame all parties involved, including politicians, tycoons and themselves

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A subdivided flat in Hong Kong. Photo: Bruce Yan

Michael Chugani

Published: 4:51pm, 4 Apr 2017Updated: 7:10pm, 4 Apr 2017

Here’s my message to ordinary Hongkongers: forget affordable housing. It’s never going to happen. You are doomed to live in subdivided slum flats that can eat up half your monthly pay. Some may qualify for public housing but the wait is long. Try not to die before it’s your turn.

If you have caring but cashless parents, uncles, and aunts, they can pool their savings to get you on the housing ladder. But don’t forget HK$3 million will only buy you a 160 sq ft coffin flat. So shun marriage like the plague. As ousted legislator Yau Wai-ching infamously noted, coffin homes are too cramped to make love.

Yau Wai-ching had some salty language to sum up Hong Kong’s housing crisis. Photo: Reuters

If you foolishly decide to take the plunge and somehow manage to consummate your marriage in cramped quarters, wear protection because baby makes three. A 160 sq ft home divided by three leaves each of you less space than the Stanley Prison cell former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen now occupies.

Yes, you’re in deep poop. And there’s no way you can climb out. That makes you angry as hell. How can it be that you live in one of the world’s wealthiest cities and have a university degree yet barely earn more than HK$10,000 a month which locks you out of even buying a home the size of a parking space?