Thread by @bopinion

The Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged Hong Kong’s economy.

It has also brought to light an enduring problem: Too many, in one of the world’s richest cities, live in informally partitioned homes no bigger than a parking space trib.al/XLjkuWJ

Hong Kong kept coronavirus cases under control for much of 2020.

Now, it is struggling to contain an outbreak centered on decrepit tenement buildings in southern neighborhoods of Kowloon, where many low-income residents live in overcrowded conditions trib.al/XLjkuWJ

Subdivided apartments — cubicles carved out of existing flats or buildings — are an emblem of the government’s failure to tackle a housing shortage.

The waiting time for public housing is almost six years, and often considerably longer trib.al/XLjkuWJ

Hence, more than 200,000 pay extravagant rents to live in ramshackle structures with poor ventilation and makeshift plumbing and sewage systems.

They have little political heft so are easily ignored, especially by an unrepresentative government trib.al/XLjkuWJ

Cramped quarters are fire risks. They are also the ideal environment for an airborne virus to spread. Just take a look at the median per capita floor area:

🇭🇰 subdivided apartments: 57 square feet
🇭🇰 as a whole: 161 sq. ft.
🇸🇬: 323 sq. ft
trib.al/XLjkuWJ

Disasters have prompted action in the past. The 2003 SARS epidemic led to changes in public health policy, even if the current outbreak has shown how incomplete they remain.

Back then, badly maintained pipes cost lives trib.al/XLjkuWJ

In Amoy Gardens, a housing estate where the virus was found to have spread through bathrooms, 329 people were infected, two-fifths of them residents in a single building.

In all, 42 died, more than 10% of Hong Kong’s SARS fatalities trib.al/XLjkuWJ

The existence of tenements is a trickier challenge. The housing shortage stems from the post-1997 price collapse, when land supply was frozen to support the market.

Since the trough in 2003, home values have risen to become the world’s most unaffordable trib.al/XLjkuWJ

So far, the government has shown minimal political will for reform.

Subdivided apartments aren’t technically illegal, though it’s a safe bet that many are contravening buildings ordinances of one kind or another trib.al/XLjkuWJ

The Hong Kong government’s chief proposal to address the housing crisis is the “Lantau Tomorrow Vision,” an environment-destroying $80 billion plan to build 1,000 hectares of artificial islands.

That promises to be another boondoggle for developers trib.al/XLjkuWJ

More sensible, and cheaper, proposals such as making brownfield sites easier to redevelop, have received less attention.

More ambition is needed. If a public health crisis won’t do it, what will? trib.al/XLjkuWJ