LIFE IN A CAGE- (a true story!)

Livestock have better accomodations than those impoverished in Hong Kong. It's hard enough living with anyone, even your spouse. Imagine sharing a 600 square foot room with 19 strangers with individual cages stacked three deep. Each are 5 by 3 feet and the 19 men who live there can't hardly squeeze by them to get to the shared broken toilet. The room they are imprisoned in reeks of death and disease.

When I discovered today that there are at least 100,000 men (and some women) in Hong Kong living in cages due to poverty, I was all over it. Nothing screams humanitarian crisis/efforts and social collapse than at least 19 people living in a 600 square flat with caged in cubicles smaller than a single mattress!

A world away, behind dark stairways, gated doors, and deteriorated cardboard signs hanging near dark entrances exclaiming in Chinese "Don't Enter Without Permission" are the financially depraved living in wire cages. The cages aren't big enough for the men to stretch out in, or sit up completely in. The wire is mangled, broken and dangerous, slashing flesh or anything that gets near it. Wire cages which resemble an over-sized rabbit hutch, are apparently more comfortable and more desirable than the particle wood cages that trap the humid hot air inside, literally cooking the occupant. (See incredible pictures)

Most often, at any given time of the year, the temperature in the flat the 19+ men share is well over 95 degrees. The air-conditioning is typically broken and if it does work, it's not turned on until 9 pm at night; utilities such as electricity is fiercely controlled by the landlord who only charges these men $150 Euros (or HK$1,160) a month for rent. Do the math and the apartment owner is collecting roughly $2,500 a month (HK$19,375) from these people for one flat.

The 19 occupants share two toilets. A small rubber hose attached to a leaky faucet is what they use to wash themselves. Social workers who monitor the apartments said the electricity is donated, so a few of them have TVs. One person on the upper deck has an aquarium. The residents must battle poor hygiene, exposure to electrical wires, and once the rent is paid, most can't afford to eat three meals a day, they are lucky to have two.

There are cockroaches everywhere, lice, bed bugs, and fleas swarm the 600 square foot flat like a Biblical plague. The cages are stacked two or three deep, for a cube on the upper deck, it goes for $100 (HK$775), and for $150 you can score the lower bunk. The lower bunk offers a little more storage space as you can put things under the cage.

With all the buzz over Hong Kong's exorbitant luxury property (like the recent record-breaking sale of a $57 million duplex), it may be hard to believe that people have been living in cage homes in this city for years (since the 1950‘s to be exact). It's a side of the city that you don't often hear about - even if you live in Hong Kong. Cage dwellings are often relegated to movies or urban legend, gathering a macabre mystique that has even piqued international interest: next month, a cage dwelling will be on display in Dusseldorf, Germany, part of an exhibition to raise awareness of the inhabitants' plight.

The Society for Community Organization (SOCO), a Hong Kong-based poverty advocacy group, estimates at least 5% of these dwellers were new tenants, forced into these conditions by the recent economic slowdown. Most are elderly, disabled, and construction workers-the hardest hit job market in Hong Kong is construction work.

The city's thin retirement protection for the elderly - a modest $130 a month in social security - and a requirement that new immigrants reside in Hong Kong for seven years before they are eligible for public housing are big contributors to the phenomenon.

There isn't any rent control in Hong Kong, so bed-space dwellers will pay the same rental rates per square foot as those for luxury flats. The cage men pay at least 40% of their income to their landlord.

The U.N. estimates that one-third of the developing world's urban population lives in the slums, with nearly 40% of East Asian urban dwellers living in slum conditions.

A man named Chung, 67, is now waiting for welfare to kick in and is on a long list for public housing (an average of a three year wait for established residents of Hong Kong). The government says it is doing its best to meet its citizens' needs, but Chung says he has lost all hope. Economic recovery or not, he feels forgotten.

It would be easy to feel forgotten because the rent on these cages are skyrocketing, as the demand for cheap housing is higher than what is available. The median rent for a cage has jumped by more than one-third in the past three years, to HK$60 per sq ft from HK$44.40 in 2006, according to the SOCO, and are up from HK$40 in 2004. Some of that increase has come as average prices in Hong Kong's volatile housing market rose about 25% in the eight months to August.

The landlords of this modern real estate are unsympathetic about their plight, as they too must eek out of a living and struggle to keep from being a cage dweller themselves.

Hong Kong is Asia's third-most expensive city, ranking only after Japan's Tokyo and Osaka, according to a 2009 ranking by Forbes. In world terms, it ranked fifth, one notch higher than its March 2008 ranking.

For this type of article, pictures and videos speak a million words. I strongly encourage you to view the attached videos and pictures. Please leave your comments, as I would love to discuss with my readers the plight of Hong Kong.