Interweaving lives in a neoliberal global city

In this morning’s South China Morning post there were two stories in particular that caught my eye. The first story, located above the fold on the first page concerned the “budget handout”. The second story, reported in the city section, concerned a fire where four people died and a further 19 were injured.

The “budget handout” is a cash handout of about $HK 6000 (just over $US800 or just under £500) that the Hong Kong government is giving to every permanent resident. There are 6.1 million people who are eligible. Eligibility is solely based on residency status regardless of where one lives or what one earns or if one pays taxes in Hong Kong or not. This means that the wealthy men and women like Stanley Ho, gambling magnate who was in the news recently because his many wives are fighting over his vast estate (incidentally he is not yet dead), will receive this handout. Likewise, those ex-Hong Kongers who live in the US, Canada, Australia, and including many of those Hong Kong Chinese who make up the 30% of buyers of London property will also receive this handout. Those who will not receive the handout are the Filipina helpers (maids), who regardless of how long they stay in Hong Kong are never eligible for permanent resident status (unless they marry a Hong Konger and then they have to wait a further 7 years to become eligible).

The story concerns the timing of this handout, with registration for the first recipients to begin in August and will start with those who are over aged 65. There will then follow 3 further phases of registration. Those who register early will receive an extra $HK200. Payments will then be handed out within the 10 weeks following registration. The first wave of handouts, according to the story, will happen just before the district council elections in the Autumn. Something that the paper reports as an accident.

The “budget handout” story has echo’s to the stimulus efforts of George Bush in the US. However these are just echos because the reasons for the handout are very different. The money comes from a budget surplus, which the government has decided to “give back” rather than spend. In addition to the approximately $HK39 billion that will be handed back, it will cost the HK government a further $HK207 million to administer the handout (which includes tens of millions in bank fees). The fact remains, however that for many people this money will be a real boon. For example one often sees elderly women collecting papers and rubbish to recycle or you see them begging. In Hong Kong elderly people are particularly vulnerable as mandatory retirement (though not self employment) age is 60 and there is no social security. There are hundreds of thousands of poor people in Hong Kong who live on the edge and in substandard housing. And this is where my second story comes in.

I have written before about the extreme differences in people’s fortunes. The world face of Hong Kong is luxury accommodation, designer consumption, and the spectacle of conspicuous energy waste of the “festival of lights” put on by, among others, the global financial industry to mark a presence in this rather odd moment in time-space. This representation of course marks Hong Kong as having some, perhaps tenuous, position at the elite table of global cities. But, like all the others at this table, much of what exists here is also perhaps characterizable as ordinary, though one would not want to participate in this particular brand of ordinary life if one could avoid it. Indeed researchers have argued, that while the emphasis in the discourse around global cities is on wealth and financial capital, global capital also rests on a bed of low wage, marginal employment. While cities like New York and London have national and sometimes city provided public services to support those at the lower end of the income spectrum, Hong Kong does not particularly provide this. Moreover, housing in Hong Kong is very expensive. Indeed, some rank Hong Kong in the top ten most expensive cities to live in in the world.

So how do the poor survive. There is some public housing in Hong Kong (the picture of Sui Wo Court, the high rise buildings that is in the sidebar of this blog, is of some of this). Approximately one third of the population lives in this type of housing. There is a waiting list of about 90,000 people with an average wait time of about 3 years. The flats have individual kitchens and toilets and are a minimum of 5.5 meters square. Like the handout discussed above, only those who have permanent residency are allowed to live in this type of housing. Moreover, if you do not have residency, but marry someone who does, you negate the eligibility of your spouse. All public housing tenants must be permanent residents.

Those who do not qualify, or who are waiting must still live somewhere. Where they live ranges from illegal structures built on hillsides as shanty towns--particularly dangerous when the torrential rains and hurricanes hit the city. These are made from bits of salvaged wood and tin. The other option is to rent in a subdivided flat. There are many of these flats in Kowloon, largely in the Sham Shi Po, Shek Kip Mei, and Ma Tau Wai areas. These buildings are older, 6 story structures built in the 1950’s. The original flats are small (about 520 square feet) and connected by an external balcony and a stairway up to the roof. Bathrooms may be shared between flats and there may be a kitchen or just space on the balcony. These are the original flats. What has happened is that these, already small spaces are subdivided into further flats or cages, by wire mesh or bamboo. Some subdivided areas can be as large as 200 square feet. The flat that I saw was divided into approximately 9 areas of about 6 feet by 6 feet. These were still pretty good because the cubicles went entirely to the ceiling. Sometimes the flats are divided into levels as well so that the cubicles are stacked 2 high. You cannot stand upright in the upper cubicles, and just barely in the lower. There is no air conditioning in these flats and Hong Kong gets very hot. The subdivided areas in the flats rent for about $HK1500 a month making them some of the most expensive housing per square foot in Hong Kong--more expensive than the average price of a mid-levels flat which is the desirable area for all the expat bankers. The more expensive areas are near the windows, while those in the middle have only the air circulation from the narrow space that is the corridor that runs between the cages. Families live in these cages. Indeed there is often 20 or more people living in the whole unit sharing a toilet and a small kitchen area.

There is little regulation with regard to the maintenance and safety features of this housing, and there appears to be even less enforcement of what there is. Sometimes the escape routes are blocked with rubbish. Sometimes the roofs have further illegal structures built on top so their is no escape if the street entrance is blocked. There are exposed electrical wires. The fire that was reported in my second news story occurred in a shop on the ground floor of one of these buildings. Those who were killed were living in subdivided flats above. Three of the four who died were all in the same family--a pregnant woman, and two small children aged 1 and 6. The father was seriously injured. The other person who died was a teenager. The fire was thought to be caused by an electrical fault. In addition to those who died or were injured a further unreported number of residents in the building and those adjoining are now homeless. The numbers would have to be in the hundreds given that these are 6 story buildings.

Clearly this system is not adequate. What is more, since 2000 the housing policy in Hong Kong has changed such that the Hong Kong government is reducing direct provision and relying on a subsidy approach whereby tenants could buy their flats at an affordable rate and there would be rental subsidy for those permanent resident families in need (here a family is a couple--recently an elderly woman was caught committing benefit fraud for forging her dead husband’s signature. She did this because she would lose her housing as a single person.) Ironically, the event that is narrated as the trigger for the original provision of public housing by the Hong Kong Authority was a fire in a squatter settlement in Shek Kip Mei in 1953. After this fire 58,000 people were left homeless--it is unclear how many died, some suggest that just 2 were killed (there is an argument about risk that suggests people in Hong Kong live in constant preparation for these types of events). While the numbers for the recent reported fire are less, the condition of the buildings in these low income areas and the high density of people, suggest that this will not be the last such fire in this area.

In the same budget speech that announced the surplus, which has eventually led to the controversial “budget handout” there was an outline of housing policy. The plan is to make an additional 20,000 units available per year for low income people through the private sector (though those who are not permanent residents will still be ineligible). Provided population does not expand this should just about cover the backlog in about 5 years. More importantly though is isn’t it the private sector that has provided the city with its cage houses? In the mean time, one can be pretty sure that these same landlords will not be plowing their “budget handout” back into improving the living conditions in the flats that they own or reducing the number of tenants per flat or reducing the rents. Indeed, the small amount of the handout would do no more that perhaps provide a coat of paint if the landlords were so inclined. More likely the money will go toward buying a new Gucci handbag--maybe if they are feeling particularly charitable they will chip in an extra $HK1500 and buy the Unicef version.